The Lantern Festival

On a trip to visit my college roommate in Taiwan, she took me to the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival, where thousands of paper lanterns are released into the night sky at once.

We wrote wishes on ours with thick brushes: one for each of our families, one for our friendship, and one silly one, from her, that I'd "finally learn to use chopsticks properly."

When the countdown came and the whole valley let go, the sky filled with glowing orange lights, rising slowly over the mountains like a river flowing upward. Strangers around us were hugging. A small boy next to me kept saying "Wow" in Mandarin, over and over, and so did I, in English.

I don't know where our lantern landed. I hope it was somewhere nice. I'm still working on the chopsticks.