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a glass bowl full of dead bees. A black sunflower, petals as long as my body. I never had a favorite type of flower before. Neither had she. She kissed me on the lips, Instantly killing herself. Her petals burst, fell like guillotined confetti. I picked them up. One by one. Buried her with the bees in a blue yard. This is why I came here: To grieve.

[Image: People sit alone at wooden tables looking at their phones]

An affordable refuge: Café de Coral in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong. Courtesy Karen Cheung.

Hong Kong, Every afternoon

The most famous “cafe” in Hong Kong is not in fact a cafe; it is Café de Coral, a fast food chain known for its baked pork chop rice and meat tenderiser-heavy steak served on a “hot sizzling plate.” Here you will not find discussions about Nietzsche or poetry readings; instead, you get retired Hongkongers reading the newspaper or simply napping in the summer afternoon, trying to escape their stuffy apartments where they could not afford to turn on the air-conditioning.