My seat belt buckled, ready for landing. I looked outside from my window to the sky cloaked behind a black veil, here and there, I saw sparkles shining a valedictory. I couldn’t tell if they were the stars or if it was the city blinking from afar, crying for help.
It has been four months since Hong Kong was at war. I remember it chanting for freedom, I remember it fighting in flames - its people teared up in chemicals, bent and broken in brutality, their home burned to ashes, and fell as raindrops to wash away the city of sins.
You and I had met at a fairly strange time in our lives, where chaos and comfort coexisted in conflicts. Hidden away in your cozy flat on Hollywood Road, I curled up like a flightless bird, trying to find shelter in your arms. I liked your company. I also liked that you had curly red hair, freckles and a big smile that fully masked your crooked soul. We were a houseful of regrets, both knew what we were here for, and somewhere along the line, our anecdotes echoed.
“When you have no hope, you have nothing to fear,” you read aloud from the book we picked out of the shelf, left here by the landlord who used to live in this apartment, “...nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to lose.” We were both on our own journey to seek salvation but instead were brought here, caught between lovers and best friends.
You came to Hong Kong eight months ago, hoping to break free from the monster of who you had been. Your mistakes held you captive until you turned yourself in, you had to be exiled with a pistol pressed against the back of your head. We were both refugees of our past, jaded by our own corrupted moralities. Arriving at our destiny from a shipwreck, we found each other.
I rested my legs on yours as you read Rebel Buddha, we took turns and it was your chapter after mine. I would never forget your voice mixed with the soundtrack of the rain tapping on the window, and bullets firing ferociously in the background. What a time to be alive, I thought, breathing in the 21st-century solitude as we took sanctuary in this foxhole. I made fun of your accent and we played fight when you held me down on the bed, trying to tickle me.
If remorse had a tune, it would be my self-loathing disguised as laughter. You said happiness was to be found from within, and you told me stories of your retreat camp in Colombia. But I was brought back to this split second up in the air, where God couldn’t be found and Buddhism couldn’t be justified. I prayed to be set free from my reality, only to have come to one where I was entrapped by my memories. Feelings might not have been real but moments were.
I thought of the time when you told me to unpack the bags that weighed me down, you said to live was to let go. Then the cabin lit up, the airplane about to land. I looked out the window at a black quilt, still covered in shivering lights - being on top of the world did not alter a thing about the truth. If only the gunfire could be blocked out by distance, if only the explosion could be muted by apathy, and if only my pounding heart could be muffled by meditation. And who was I trying to fool when you said you loved me? We both knew well enough - you were my escape from reality and I was just your remedy.
