You know every word

You know every word to Despacito 
despite speaking Portuguese 
You have a chubby little cactus tattooed across your thigh
and a fresh pair of koi swimming in yin yang across your spine
You wear those sparkly rainbow booties with the three-inch heels to class
and clubbing
I suppose it has something to do with your being a dancer
How else can you explain how you never trip? Never stumble? Never fall?
Always graceful, when moving through twenty-four form taichi
or six AM meditation on the rooftop, guided by the app chiming on your phone
Tasting the thick Shanghai summer settling across our upper lips 
readying our minds for a day of pressure points and melon pops
anticipating a night of ginger Coke chasing down a sip of herbal whiskey
it's so hard to speak of you like you aren't right here
still here
I never want to put you in past tense
Keep racing up the Great Wall with me, you barely sweating at all,
me drowning in my own salt and the youness of it all
the nowness of your earthy, thrilling chuckle
You always offer me a cigarette. I always say no.
You'll die of lung cancer one day, I say, as you drag 
and exhale
and I 
​can't bring myself to move away
can't stop following the promise of fire