Strange Land

Illustrations for a short story by

I could sense the foreign spring behind me.

This bloom could one day be the opening lines of a story, perhaps my own life story.

It could say that I stood there, with my back facing the garden and the blossoming magnolia tree.

Write my parents: tell them that I drowned in the river and my traces are lost. This will set them free, as well as I.

I will go on to live the life of a bourgeois.

The coffee shop across the river had lit two rows of lanterns: red and green. Probably tasteless from up close.

But from afar, they

shimmered with mystique

and color, and their reflections in the fierce, black river were magnificent.