A Night with a Threat in Its Muzzle  

From the hotel room on the twenty-fourth floor the brown

rail cars in the old Shanghai station are like the steel

boats in which, at night, the darkness travels in the

company of winter. Night after night I keep watch in my

bright hotel tower over the railway platforms for the

travellers of old, who have already reached the end of their

journey. Night after night I fill their outlines with breath until

suddenly someone turns round and looks me in the eye. I am

overcome with loneliness, it travels like the cold from the extremities

to the centre of the breath, like a bullet through soft tissue,

so that in panic I dial the receptionist on duty for help.

One or two moments later a woman and a child come in,

they arrange paintbrushes on the bed, they dip them into my

freezing sweat and start to draw little water animals on my skin:

buffalo, tiger, ape, dog, cat, hare, filly, sheep,

ox, snake, bison, lion, lizard, rooster, butterfly.

We will set free the being that hides within you, they whisper,

as the images multiply on my flesh. When they finish drawing the last

animal I go to the window and leap with fiery wings into the sky.