Poem: last time in Hong Kong

last time in Hong Kong

it’s years and years ago and I’m
too shy to say diu lei ge lo mo de chou hai
to the official office spy
cos Keith Ng from the past reckons
I say it like a Mainlander.
My accent is a war crime,
he should’ve made me practice more before
I got here. I’ve been speaking Mandarin
badly this whole time pitching the human rights report
saying dongxi a lot, and it’s a bit, kinda, sad? (yes – both)
but these dongxi do the job.

At office yum cha lunch with
[redacted], [redacted] and [redacted], they
say (kindly) ‘when you speak Mandarin you sound
Singaporean’ which is – oof! accurate. But a bit sad I mean
why not even Malaysian? Why not Yunnanese? You know why –

a Southern mouth reciting the North from a
government book – and you know why

there are no trolleys here, trolleys are tells
of the outer colonies.
If you woke up and saw a dim sum trolley
you would know who kidnapped you,
that you were prisoner of a time capsule.

Last time [redacted] went undercover, it was a
migrant labour camp deep in the North.
She helped end that system (it was a time
when you could end systems) –
the table’s centre moves – when was that?

At this moment right now
the real one not just one in a poem
she’s a therapist, and this city I knew is
don’t say gone – no – gone
to ground. ‘We are all exiles now’
says Keith Ng from the future, an
unpublished draft,
waiting.

What happens when you turn and
leave this world? In Mandarin it means
you’re dead. While if you stay but clock out
you might be a therapist, or even a
yoga teacher. You might be
an unkept promise, or
just a bit sad,
wheels stirring the air
like you are definitely
going somewhere.

‘Last time’ in Singlish, no definite
article, is indeterminate and usually
long ago, but specifically not
the real last time
that you met or did this thing now
repeated.

It could mean
when you were small or
before you were born or
before the riots or

before the bright red of the Samsui women’s hats imprint upon my mother forever as she peers at Keppel Harbour from the railings of a Rangoon steamer, red squares punched into denim sky and sea, atop solid blue bodies hauling bricks on the dock

it could mean before she was smuggled in the womb across the border into the Golden Triangle, into the Kokang fiefdom of Olive Yang aka Miss Hairy Legs, the feared opium warlord and infamous midcentury dyke

it could mean before the Revolution it could mean before the Civil War Part Two it could mean before the Great Patriotic War it could mean before the Civil War Part One it could mean before the Sino-Japanese war it could mean before the Republic it could mean before the Opium War but

‘last time’
does not ever mean
the end.

‘Next time’ Singaporeans also like that one say mah
(can I even pull that off?
my accent is a hate crime)
‘next time’ means one day, I will meet you there
‘next time’ as if there will
always be one, even if
there never is
just one
last time

for wandering
with you
or with you
or with you or with
you and you and you or
alone
down to Tsim Sha Tsui

and everywhere being
seen and seeing
rain-ravaged flowers cutting out
of memorials for the dead,
loudspeakers weighing on the living
screaming icons and reminders
of this bright striving of the heart –
the terminal shrouded
in fog, but refracting
an immense basin of light,
the ghost of what is
to come, moving
through you

years before
the rise and the fall –
the last time depends on the next time
I feel the city beating, I hear it call
my name.