the hague at 3am

untitled by xixi cao


we're supposed to leave but for whatever reason sit on a park bench. i won't lie, there's a cup-cake involved. midnight strolled by just recently. __a few minutes pass.
- i don't wanna get up.
- me neither.

- i don't wanna go home.
- me neither.


___*___*___*

the palace. i hear ducks in the water. the parkway is lined with alternating trees and lightposts.
the odd droplet of rain.
some words.


___*___*___*

when the streets are empty like this i ride my bike down the middle. a showing of sovereignty. an hour ago i had said but this is my world. quite literally, it's mine. it belongs to me and i love it. each and every part of it. she'd given an odd look. and half yours too then.

slice the street in half like an orange.

there's wind but i can't see it in the darkness.

at some point things were wet. there's an echo of wetness, the shadow of wetness lives everywhere, even without the rain.


___*___*___*

when i was 17 i'd met this girl. we were introduced through a mutual friend:
- q, this is eRgani, she likes cheeky trouble-makers.
- ieaRng, this is q, he likes blondes with big boobs.

we spent the whole night talking and kissing.
the sun found us walking by the beach, she collecting shells, me memories.


___*___*___*

leaves drip from the trees, heavy and wet and in the streetlight insincerely auburn. the bike paths and sidewalks are tucked away neatly under a blanket of them. i ride my bike as though over carpet or cloud. the trees opening up in front of me to reveal more blanketed forwardness. i pedal through. through, always through.


___*___*___*

i'd forgotten night has no other side. there is no tomorrow. it is a thing that is, a simple existence. unquestionable and unfathomable in its own honesty.


___*___*___*

she leaves at a large intersection. i go another way. unknown thing in unknowable night.
red brick buildings bundled together tightly. i pass a garbage truck. i ride in the middle on the wrong side of the road. the dotted line is my spine. my arrow.


___*___*___*

in the mirror my muscles quiver with tension and loneliness. the bumps feel hidden away, cast out. the striations of my shoulders, and the cuts in my abdomen call out to hands in the shadowed corners of the room. nothing wearing flesh lives there but me.

moments later i'm dressed , but loneliness is always naked. __always asking to be touched by fellow nakedness.

to lose water in water.
lips in lips.
bodies into bodies.


___*___*___*

it sits like liquid in a cup ,
unmoving pitiless wonder
dreamtime and lovetime:

what i know of it, it taught me itself.
grew into my bones.

there are only brave men now.