Someone waiting for an elevator. Someone turning on a light.Someone flying a kite and losing it. Someone planting two date treesin the yard, and imagines dating. Someone writing a short story.Some poet ushers in a century of sadness. Some f— whisperedto the empty clouds. Someone withholds his f—, knowing youand the s— you did in high school, and lights your cigarette. Some windchases a bottle into the wet undergrowth. Someone at a demonstration.Someone demonstrates patience. My grandma was patient, chopstickedcelery into my bowl. My great aunt reminded me that I was lonelyand read me printouts from a matchmaker. Some girl returning homefrom America: is this also her story? Some apartment buildingwhere this happened, a family gathering. Some families are formalitiesbut some love each other so much as when they laugh, their heads throw backas in f—ing. As in f—ing, someone secretly sighs, and looks up to the light.~My father sighed, and looked up to the light. Grandpa is writing a story.In this story, a young man returns to Shanghai after thirty yearsand, while relearning the local dialect, is jailed for spying.Grandpa occupied the living room to interrogate the young manwith his pen. Tuck in your shirt, father patted me on the head.In the summer of 1985, my hair was an abandoned fieldof bamboos. I widened my eyes: a wobbly lamp; yellowed ceiling;all my toys hidden in a box by the wall. A wind banged tirelesslyon the window, like a young man without a cigarette. I saw himcome in and throw himself into the rattan chair. Five more minutes,he mumbled through chapped lips. An editor? A policeman?All I could hear was a click in my father’s throat. I was thirty toobut wanted the room for myself, my hands itchy in my pockets,counting among my friends a chimney and a white water tower…~1937: no chimneys or water towers in sight. A boy counted flowerscovering the bodies of his dead friends. The Japanese bayonets, shinylike family letters. In 755, Li Bai wrote a letter home before joining his wifebut didn’t know the Tang civil war was a few months away. He died in 762.Also in 762: the Abbasid Dynasty began its Golden Age in the new capitalof Baghdad, which would last until 1517 when the last Caliph-in-namesurrendered to the Ottomans. Reading history in his father’s study,wiping dust off the book spines, the boy thought of empires, an ever beautifulinvasive species. 1618: the (third) defenestration of Prague. 1918: WWI.Chinese laborers built trenches for Entente powers: who was alive in 1949for a plot of land? The boy was counting again, his imagination flourishingin his empty belly. He asked me yesterday: Who are you? And I wonderedwhich answer wouldn’t surprise him. Also yesterday: how he saved up peanutsfor a girl outside a bomb shelter. -What happened to her? -I didn’t dare to look back.~I don’t dare to look forward. Do you? Tonight, time is a reaping machine.I sit in my room, wondering what power I have, if I’m choking upbecause I haven’t been writing enough. Who would I blame? What ifthis happened: a poet stole my ration, traded all of it for a cup of wine.His wife works at a jar factory and lost two fingers. His son snoresand gives me the finger. Tonight, I have a pen to set things straight.I offer them more than what they wished for: the poet a lifetime of doggerel,the wife another alcoholic. As for the son, who wanted to blow up the world:his tomb will be full of flowers. I will visit him every third Wednesday,bring him fresh lilies that glitter under the sun. I will tell himall the stories in the world, how everyone forgets everyone elseand lives happily ever after, how every morning now is such a delightthere is only the news of blissful, blissful marriages:between chairs and wardrobes, between birds and diligent flies.