In an Oriental Hotel on the Fifth Floor

 
The cars below honked their distaste
through the twilight hours
sleep-driven people had come to hate.
 
I sat in a room decorated with
earth greens, muted reds, and Chinese patterns,
dainty golden circles and strokes.
The most exciting thing in the room
was a swirling wood staircase
leading to another bed.
I was seven, when attention spans are like
lit dynamite with short wicks.
 
Until a certain fascination
with things too small to see
paved the way for the huge idea of Tinyville.
We were the Ting sisters, Annabelle and Hope.
We found the man who stole 500 one dollar bills
and tracked Romain and Romaina,
rats with huge feet.
We lived in germs and cured Tinyville people
of diseases their houses gave them.
We saved the town from being squashed by a giant foot
and getting sprayed with Lysol Disinfectant.
 
And now Tinyville lies in the graveyard
of discarded memories.
One thought still haunts us,
the image of sitting in the dreary hotel room
playing imaginary games in the twilight
above the streets of Shanghai.