104dr-7

in 1924 i moved down to kowloon. shanghai was getting, strained. the opium started to hurt, the people grew thinner, or taller, like they were being stretched. like the low white sky created a suction on them, and the opium started to hurt me.

days started to go missing. you'd go out to buy a duck and then it was sunday and the catholic bells were ringing and the brown girl would tell you, when you were awake, that she was your wife and and you believed her for it was plausible, even likely.
there would be no sign of the duck.

the brown girl was never stretched, drawn taught, whitened by tension. every day she got rounder and smoother. softer and quieter and more gentle until one afternoon she crossed a slanting ray of window light, spilling softly across the floor, and dissolved.

i remember sometime later, on a train at night, leaving that place and the sky was still white. i saw a beggar on a station platform tall and drawn as a lamp post, his head surrounded by insects like lines of magnetic force.

that was in 1924 when i went south to kowloon.