This piece is part of the Wine notebook, which features original art by Su Yu-Xin.

W tells me about the loquats she was driving,
there was sunlight, summer hours, white dresses against soft wood,
chilled glasses of pale wine. Outside, beyond the patio,
warm air floated over the far mountains. 
My to-do list says send emails, do edits, get sign-offs and
when you get a chance, get some fucking sleep.
I open new windows, tap my fingers like a maestro
—Hello, thank you for your time today.
The dried-out roses on my windowsill are still roses.
And out there is a summer with sweet loquats and wine.
On the patio W floated, cracked jokes, checked in on the stories
of other lives, lives in which she was not the main character,
lives she was just a participant in, a side someone,
dropping in, bearing loquats.
The roundness of the word loquat arouses me.
I think of lychees, the white flesh of a fruit which always says yes to me.
In my story, the loquats she held were white lychees,
or locheequats, some fruit we’ve never seen before, 
mango-size, coming from a beautiful place
where fruits are picked just ripe and no one is harmed in the making
and the body moves joyfully, dancing somersaults, until naturally, it sleeps,
while emerald locheequats sweeten and turn fat overhead.
This is how we learn to not do things.
Oh the long hours I spent on my to-doing.
Locheequat, fruit of the non-doing.
Locheequat, fruit of more life.
Locheequat, fruit of the cracking knuckles, tapping time, 
sunning our cheeks against baked window glass,
watering roses, whistling tunes 
(our lips want to pucker)
licking the summer clean with wet tongues
clear & sweet on the deck
pressing our ears to each other’s
& while we listen
the western wind passes by