Mid-September I fly home to visit Alex. Hong Kong is not home. Alex is.

There are still little pockets in the underbelly of this city, of Dallas, where I rarely go anymore…where they ask me about him. A darkness loiters those spaces even in the day, though I pretend that it is more and more invisible to me, and it barely exists at all anymore. I’ve wondered if it has always looked the same. I can’t remember. The night people that laid there are all played out of it, having taken up better lies to bury themselves into; I am a morning person again, and so our paths never cross.

Alex was a night person and morning person both- a man obsessed and transendent of time. A tiny belly-less budda with a chuckle that honked like a semi trailer, and compassion enough to fill that dank womb….until the end, when his eyes got flat and then he asked me to help him roll up his clothes and pack out. He asked me to marry him, but he couldn’t make me understand. Some people in the underbelly were mad at me for that, and they called me an idiot when I fell apart and he was gone.

So, in September I fly home to visit Alex. Today’s fortune cookie reads ‘You will soon bring joy to someone’, and I cannot wait for the New Moon Festival when I see my friend.