Someplace that looks like home
Someplace that looks like home has lily pads
floating on a green lotus pond at the Chilin nunnery,
where my mother goes every year to pray, driving through
Lion Rock tunnel to Diamond Hill, almost to the
airport at the farthest tip of the city, surrounded by small
islands that dot the water like green beans in the sweet,
cool soup we drink during the summer, when the hot
weather drives us indoors to where the aircon is always
on, places like IKEA, shopping malls, or the Central Library
next to Victoria Park, which hosts football matches, flower
shows, and a candlelight vigil depending on the season, and is
only a short walk away from the MTR station where you can
board any train you like to leave the city and climb
mountains shaped like a sleeping lion or a dragon’s scaly back,
so high above the sea that you can look down and see
skyscrapers with a thousand windows cast onto
Victoria Harbour dancing lights that look like the shaking
chandelier at my uncle’s house in Pingtung where I used to go
every summer to visit family members whose names I don’t
remember, and where I felt my first earthquake while eating
cold sesame noodles and trying to send a small, metal pinball
home through a maze of bends and turns that look like
the spiral tower by the lakefront trail in Sha Tin Park next to
the bicycle shack, which rents dusty bikes to us for
an afternoon spent riding to the science museum and past
Shing Mun River where rowers train for the dragon boat
festival that will take place in a couple months, by which
time I won’t be here but an ocean away, walking down
East Wacker Street and thinking about how the floating discs of
ice on the frozen green lake look just like lily pads.
The Kindling 