Cassette tapes, abandoned when CDs took over,

CDs, forgotten when MP3s took over,

MP3s, gradually left behind when iPads took over,

Stayed in a city for so long, had enough of it,

Turning back, I find youth was all fed to the dogs,

Only now do I realize: the heart is on the left, the person on the right,

The heart has stayed hollow, with one empty spot,

It turns out the only things left behind aren’t just people and objects, but mostly silence,

And so I started to escape. Escaping is caffeine, a compound,

Watching the fellow travelers ramble in the group chat, quietly listening to music,

Choose a city, book a ticket, and set out on the journey,

In the waiting room, gathering the moods of strangers around me,

Their laughter, their waiting, their loneliness,

When the train starts, pack your loneliness together and throw it into the suitcase,

Moving on to the next stop, finding life and finding myself through travel,

Love truly lies outside daily life,

Waited and waited, then stopped waiting,

Loved and loved, then stopped loving,

Thought about it and then stopped thinking,

Is this confusion, or composure?

We have no excuse to persuade the past,

Sometimes, one person’s innocence, one person’s thoughts, one person’s silence,

What it gets me in return is: you ask for too much.

Really? No one knows; either way, time just flows away like this,

Still remember that year, two silly lads,

Rode the scooter to SM to watch a movie,

On the way back, charging through the wind and rain, yelling nonsense,

The helmet fell off halfway—I stopped and ran back to pick it up,

Keep moving forward,

Some parts are like a little-fresh Taiwanese film,

Back then, what was truly lost was myself,

Where will the tiny me be?

Good night, myself.

Good night, Beijing.

END

2015

Beijing