On the cobblestoned street

On the cobblestoned street by our hotel in London
there’s a deli whose produce stand is labeled, at one junction,
“pomegranet”.

Plucking its seeds
heavy with a colonial homesickness for somewhere
I had just met,
the familiar tune of a Faye Wong cover
珀耳塞福涅杯奶茶
my English mother tongue to my stumbling Cantonese,
my father’s inverse.
Yours,
forced onto us,
cannibalized by mine.
My fingertips blushed and I rinsed the stains away with rain,
between torrents of which

the sun would appear and paint the landscape a balmy gold,
and every time it did I was so moved
I could have understood your religion.