You are sitting across the aisle from me, fast asleep. We are on our way back to the airport after five days of adventure all over Taiwan, our feet sore from walking every waking moment. This is the first time that we are not sitting together--with together meaning as a two-headed entity with fused bodies and entangled limbs and clasped hands-- because we had come up to this bus as among the last few passengers and the only seats left were singular seats--separate, but across each other. I wished only to be next to you and cradle your sleeping head, as we did for each other in between all our adventures, watching the city that had played our strange but affable host, rush past for the last time.
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You are a red jacket, and neon green backpack, as if you had decided to become a beacon in a sea of people wearing all the other colors, and places whose colors were either muted and worn down through time, or bright and artificial and fleeting. Before you, it had always been easy for me to lose myself in places and unexplored corners of new cities, and it had been easier to let myself do so. With you, there is no place that is unfamiliar now, or too enormous, or too frightening. In a train station blurred with the swiftness of hundreds of people hurrying to and from trains, there is no more fear of getting swept away. You are all red and green, standing still,waiting, and I could always find you.
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