east meets west

The smoke you exhaled around my face
curled around my nostrils the way Taipei air does
on a rainy day, and I hear stray motorcycles
in the distance. The fog penetrates through
iron gates that scarlet kissed with oxygen,
staining my fingerprints with the residue of nostalgia

Your namesake has British pretensions,
but you breathe out the forests of Wuhan
and her morning condensation flows through your veins
which makes me miss your colonization;
the way you took over my mind
with hazy fantasies I constructed like paper tigers

because I can still smell your dynasties
that you built up like great walls around a fortress
to protect yourself from girls like me, but baby,
my self-fulfilling prophecies aren't covered
by your insurance policies- I am invincible
and threw down our bones long ago; read
the back of turtle shells like I could predict
a self-determined future;
wrote symbols on your back with my nails
so you can forget me when you wake up
alone in the morning tomorrow.