From our bed I hear sounds of the night.
Lone engines and drunken conversations drifting up from the street and in through the open window.
These are not Hawaiian noises, the singing of Venetian gondoliers or the Treacherous Sounds of Cathay.
Though it feels as if I were nothing but a fortunate traveller in a faraway land, I realize through veils of sleep that this is my very own city, early in the morning.
It doesn't matter. I am happy.

It's best to remember these nights. Comfortable and caring, someone could be carrying me up hushed stairs, away from grown-ups singing and cheering, toward strange bedrooms and unfamiliar sheets, in a time when I did not know how big the world could really be, or how many places it held for finding sleep.

Exciting, adventurous, someone could be campfires in the humid jungle night, I think, someone could be jinrikishas in a long gone Shanghai and sirens through warm rain and Hong Kong streets.

Someone could wake me in yet another room of yet another Paris hotel.

Someone could touch me like curtains flowing in the night wind, sand in my hair and the smell of salt.

I move, or maybe
she moves me.
The sheets twirl like arms of Galaxies, I think.

Perhaps someone will be there
if I reach out
right there
beside me.