Piggyback Crossing in November

By Anson Wang

This country exhausts me early into the afternoons but
I don’t mind it. Even those predicaments that produce
shame, being a foreigner among a people I blend into.
In time I will learn to coexist with the seasonal gloom. I
had thought I was beyond feeling apologetic, but these
encounters with strangers who don’t need to notice,
yet still do, mean I can probably learn to start letting the
shame in.

I visualize the semester’s end. I couldn’t yesterday. The
construction of the shifting present is a beautiful thing,
I marvel at it like I do clouds from an airplane window.
Their assembly something pleasantly shocking to
behold.

I don’t dream of you enough, and I’m so afraid of taking
you for granted. That my arrogance will reveal an undis-
covered closet of flaws from my blindspot. And that by
then, it would already be too late.

Last semester I had a beautiful dream that I couldn’t
make sense of until recently. I dreamt that we were in
conflict, lying together in that bed, the sun and moon
clocking in and out of the room while days passed.
Something you had said was bothering me; I still don’t
know what could’ve wound me up like that, and when I
went to reach for your arm, you pulled away.

Further and away the dream took us. I think that’s the
best way to characterize a dream. How there is never a
setting, just the motion itself. The happening.

It was a winding road now, and we were high up, but
the walls of the vessel wouldn’t allow us to see past the
brim of what encapsulated us. All that could be seen
was the sky. We were going fast, I thought.

Before I could log the scene, it shifted again, and you
were on my back. This time the motion was trudging
from my boots, up, uphill on that bridge overlooking the
highway. I clutched at your legs wrapping around my
torso tightly as the cement blocks under my feet rear-
ranged themselves, contorting in all directions. Purple
flowers bloomed to the right as cars whizzed past our
coordinates below. The tension had changed, some-
how, because you were crying, and so was I, digging
my nails into the undersides of your thighs. Details of
the turmoil were lost in the discord, but I think we were
fighting to keep walking, to keep moving forward, up.

I woke up next to you, in a cold sweat. Dawn light
reflecting off your blinds, turning the entire room gray.
Clothes strewn on the floor. My shoes tucked by the
side of the door, next to your shelf.

I am trying to return to that room. I am trying to return
there.