The Yellow Dress
Inevitable city, coming back to you, like dreaming –
it all seems real,
I take for granted that it’s half invented,
the headlong wind that brings on restlessness,
the bridge that vanishes halfway across the river.
Memories sleep and wake,
in between them I am drifting.
I know it’s not that other summer’s evening.
I recognize the past, it’s nearer and more vivid,
the yellow dress thrashing on the line
in the convent dormitory courtyard,
my Romanian roommate delirious with fever,
the day I skipped class
like there was nothing to prevent me
and we drove to the Camargue
to take in its “unique and savage landscape”
according to you and your Let’s Go.
The tall glasses of pastis,
the high late light, the chairs.
I slipped past but I took note,
you wanted to kiss me.
What followed after was unprecedented.
In The Mood For Love, 2000, dir. Wong Kar-wai