Crossing and Wondering II, Yuemei Zhang, photo by Alana Borges Gordon
I can’t seem to hold on to
the bright yellow swirls of yesterday
as I fall deeper and deeper
into the chasm of what I believe to be tomorrow.
The inky whirls billow around,
turning the world that was once covered in cyan
into a void drenched in indigo and navy,
too dark to see through the hazy mirror.
I can only watch as they come closer.
The chasers of time always running.
Always one step ahead, one step behind,
too fast and too slow altogether,
forever caught in the limbo between them.
They are falling, tired, exhausted.
The bodies collapsing one by one
from the perpetual race they are forced to sprint.
Smooth skin turning to wrinkles and
tears running black as the clock tolls.
Their time is up.
The ringing, the ticking gets louder
as I get closer to the bottom.
The oxygen is harder to hold in my lungs,
I can feel my tongue go dry as the
vivid hues of my past stretch farther
and farther away.
The clock chimes again menacingly.
Its hands never stop spinning.
The sharp blades reaching up
to cut me down with every hour, minute, second.
I can feel the blues underneath me.
They catch me in a pillow-like embrace.
I feel my breathing pause and my heart jitter
as each toll of a new minute
brings me closer and closer to the end.
It’s then that I can finally see him.
The little blue man huddled in the corner of the storm.
He is dull, faded but not forgotten
as I have seen him somewhere before.
His dark eyes stare back at mine
as I watch the pigments take him in their grasp.
He is calm as he hands me his blanket
and is dragged into the pool of indigo and navy.
After he is gone I realize
that I can never truly go back
to the world of yellows.
Time is now chasing me too.
I am now one of the runners in the race.
Zhang’s original art was inspired by a line in Mark Twain’s novel The American Claimant: “It is a blessed thing to have an imagination that can always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed.”