Bimbo Moon

The moon hangs over the Huangpu River like a plate of bone, and it is wrong. Too large. Too close. Below it, the Mid-Autumn lanterns along the Bund still glow red and gold, but the crowds beneath them have gone quiet — not fleeing, just standing, faces tilted up, drinking in the light like tea.

You watch a woman three feet away finish her transformation. Her black hair bleaches pale gold strand by strand; her face rearranges into something doll-like and serene; her eyes empty to a flat, placid blue. Then she smiles — a wide, glossy, empty smile — and drifts toward the river with the others, all of them moving like one slow tide. She was singing a folk song with her daughter five minutes ago. You know because you heard it.

Your phone buzzes against your hip: three missed calls from your mother in Pudong, and a text that reads only "yue'er, the moon is in the apartment." Your hands are still your own. The shadow of the overpass you stand under is the only reason, you suspect. You have perhaps an hour of darkness left, and a river between you and home.