Tsim Sha Tsui never stops. Nine years old, I lived over the Siberian fur shop, saw tarts, johns, pimps, hawkers who lived in alleys, sold fruit, American sailors, tourists, mini-marts

of pigs’ meat, guys selling from trucks that never unparked. What a glowing, roaring, stenching inferno, beast-guts sizzled beneath a cloud of unknowing,

shrieking forests of people, screaming lights – Rick, on Chatham Road, we passed by each other, you on shore leave, seeing the sights, me pursuing the bus, a runner

who sped right past – it happened just once – as that whirl of chaos granted glimpses of the future already behind us, even as I stopped and turned and wanted

to speak, but instead ran on, out of the dream and into the blue, fifteen years paid down to where first we met, on a walk downstream of Grasmere, and another thirty flown

faster than before, mere intake of breath, years of friendship, till that night when, alone, I journeyed to Decatur with my shibboleth, as if I’d just spun round to say “Hello.”