You asked me how I am

today

and I
bewitched three years into one “health”

two coasts into one “prosperity”

one life into sixteen characters—
a singular, somewhat defiant whisper

of

“well”.

A stranger, I know, came before your eyes
when your fingertips searched the keyboard
for some seasonal, personal idioms;
An apparition

LOL

A pixie cut

Oh for sure

The daily metropolitan maze of subterranean commute

I remember

(where I got off)

time flies :(

The last urge to come forth with arms held out—

let’s talk later.

Your cheeks look chipmunk on virtual display;
chronological.
Gridded words you
so arrestingly curate
they narrate;
infant stackings of rhymes against combinations so old I
tasted their blooming bridges of chrysanthemum chisels in my tongue
but cannot complete the

symmetry of verse
alignment of parts

(or muster a sufficiently floral reply to your bouquet of ideograms).
You want to know
if I still speak our language these days;
I wonder the same thing.

So, here:
I take ironic solace in
this ornate alien alphabet—

don’t ask what syllables I say “yes” to nowadays. Call me what my
mother wrote on
the back of a receipt on a humid Pearl River Delta day;
take me back into our silver grey hutong with your round lute,
and I will whisper the answers underneath the tiled roof with
all my beautiful lost words, brewing gracefully
in a ceramic jar just beneath the imperial canal.

not
di
gits
not
de
le
ta
ble
I’d close my eyes and picture you—

but if you have boxes for breaths
and I icons for eyes,
it’s too easy
to type those words
without counting back the heartbeats.