My most vivid recollections of China are filled with fond memories and blissful experiences. The smell of smoke and frying foods wafts through the air, and at night the streets are a disorienting mess of flashing billboards and street lights.

come to you in
cyclical relapse
with each syllable
escaping

muzzling silence
be tempted to borrow
its imprisonment and speak in
dialogues conversed by

friction of skins.

the first thing is to wait for the rain
to soften
our skin so that
might easily peel the surface
away
and still the blood stays
clinging in our veins
like the fly to
a horse
pulsing and swaying
to stay the rippling body
veins
the blood inside preserved

Turquoise vinyl siding
a green darker than any Carolina marsh.
Twenty steps up to the front door.
Fifteen more to the bedrooms.
Will the luggage make it to its destination?