pineapple tart.

He found himself walking down a quiet side street that opened out to the embankment below. The trees were bare, save for a thin layer of snow traced every rise and fall between the branches. A gentle breeze carried within it a whisper of a quiet hum, and a familiar scent of something he once knew before. A sentimentality that he had not been accustomed to in a very long time, the forgotten memory of a place he once called home. 

She was still asleep as he stepped out of the apartment they shared. The events of the week prior had all but seemingly blended themselves into each other. For the first time in what seemed an eternity, he had finally found the time to be. As he looked out across of the terrace window this early morning, the city before him seemed to tease with a quiet promise reminiscent of his very first days there. The sun had barely lifted itself up against the horizon, and daylight broke with the hope and courage of all that was to come.

He felt more himself here than he ever did in the city of his birth. All that remained of a time before seemed almost forgotten and non-existent, save for the few sparse photographs, and loose mementoes buried in a forgotten drawer of his dresser. The very few tangible memories he shared of that distant faraway place, brought up fleeting moments of happiness, but not enough to sustain the softening and tiring embers of a life he knew before. He continued to hold hope at restoring the empty spaces of a life once lived with his current present, but the gap to him, seemingly felt too far to bridge; the space of his now, the before, and everything in between to come.

He had made his excuses each time she pried and asked of the family he had left behind. She was an only child, and so indisposed to the notion of family as everything she knew it to be. He remembered meeting them for the very first time, and recalling the uneasiness he felt, as he had come to understand with her a very different kind of love than he was once accustomed to. Perhaps because of that difference, he held a quiet shame in his heart with the realization that he could not match her own excitement. His family was the antithesis of hers, and was hesitant that she would never understand his own relationship with them.

The sight of freshly baked petit fours through a clear patisserie window caught his attention, as he radiantly found himself returning to a space and time he was seemingly unprepared for. It was evening, and the lights had come on. The moon shone bright in the sky, and the garden was lit in lantern and candlelight. The sound of loud conversation echoed through the insides of a concrete house, against the shuffle and clacking of heavy tiles on a muffled surface. Amid the sound of chopsticks grating the edge of porcelain bowls, and a varied assortment of tidbits kept neatly packaged in red-lipped containers, he found himself at ten-years-old once more. The world then, was seemingly brighter than all he had ever come to know.

“Ah Heng-ah, come inside. After the mosquitoes will get you!” 

An outsider returning, he found the sight of the familiar spaces of his youth through the auspicious glow of the Lunar New Year. He couldn’t remember the last time he fully celebrated the space that made up much of the joy he witnessed as a child. It was only when he realized how little time he had left, did he understand how much of it had been wasted. He had been fighting a loosing battle with time, and it had now decidedly shown him its hand. He had to decide on the inevitability of his return.

He returned to the petit four to the window and committed himself to a decision, determined to see it through. He walked into the store and smiled at the assistant at the counter. She proceeded to pick the confections from its place on the second shelf of the display tray, and nested the intricately laced pineapple crown shaped sable, and treacle jam creation into a ribbon tied box. Thanking him for his purchase, he greeted her with a smile, and left as the sleepy world beyond broke timidly back to life once more. The rumble of a stationary engine, and a sudden proclamation from a street corner beyond, seemed to mark an end to his quiet solitude.

He returned to the apartment, and found her ready with coffee. Her eyes smiled widely and wildly at him as his own returned their smile. She kissed him gingerly on the cheek as he pulled against the ribbon, untying his purchase.

“I saw these on my walk, and they reminded me of home. I think its time I went home. Don’t you agree?”

“I can’t wait.”