The silent orchid

He travels 6000 miles to see her.

The polite clip of an English tea room is unfamiliar,

her voice a mumble,

words brush off like cake-crumbs.

The explosion left him deaf in one ear.

As today, he strained:

it felt like the backdraft shunted his brain.

She knows, but still he has to lip-read,

picks up “Hong Kong,” replies

to what he thinks she said.

Says the traffic is incessant,

always the screaming of brakes –

to her drumroll and her rising dragon.

Street markets hum.

His engines roar with rage.

The vendor greets him faithfully,

sells him soft bears for her two children.

You can buy anything in this city.

He looks for her voice –

it is nacred, like a cultured mabe;

striking, like a bauhinia leaf.

He stirs their laughter into milk tea, noisily.

Plays his spoons to her ghost.

A microwave ping sounds defeat in their game:

He chooses a decade’s silence

rather than

a long, uncomfortable evening with a cold host.

(First published in Avatar Review, Issue 18, June 2016.)