Alvin Chung
Deep in Time’s Crevasse
by the alveolate ice
waits, a crystal of breath
your irreversible
witness.
—Paul Celan, excerpt from ‘Etched Away From’, translated by Michael Hamburger.
In a winter long ago, a naked boy slept beneath a double-folded blanket and texted deep into the night. He woke up to embrace the sun-drowned morning air, then took a hot shower, watching his shadow on the wall.
Texture of water slipping between thighs. Time does not breathe. Steam rises.
Every night, he would strum the same chords on a borrowed guitar (never returned). The boy recorded his own tunes, and the voice sounded like a broken fan at the close of dusk.
Used tissues beside two stacks of books on a black desk. The Oxford Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Poetry. Raindrops. Deep grey fog swimming through a driveway by the trees. Damp window glass. Tinges of soil. Dead mosquitoes on the floor.
Stripping beneath the blanket again, he invited a frenzy of fourteen-year-old fantasies, of being freshly-in-love, and of the fading face in the mirror. He wore a small scar from a skating accident.
Red clothes hangers. Unmade bed. Spilt tea from last night. A nineteen-sixties style vocal harmony on fuzzing speakers. Angels fallen from poetry books. Extinguishing whispers to self. Empty photograph frames. Phone without battery.
Many years ago, when the summer wasn’t over yet, seasons would last forever in dreaminess. The boy walked in clouds of imagination within his head, inspired by adventure films and the adrenaline rush of chase scenes. Teachers would punish him for inattentiveness; he stood against a blue wall in the midst of the hallway. These hot days were marked by pale sun glitters, illuminated by dust, swimming in the air.
Boiling water screams. Alarm clock drones. Books fall. Floor cracks. I wish I knew: words are scars, thoughts are tattoos, each alphabet flows of blood. A green leaf shoots behind the glass. Rainfall. Was there a prophet here, a thousand years ago? Did anyone dream the same dream as I did; think the same words; look into the mirror the same way?
Still the remembrance came of a darkened day a year ago in a Dresden art gallery. He texted while admiring Raphael, Rembrandt, and Botticelli. The friend typed of new-year blues and family while the boy, before the portrait of Venus, thought of the tunnels of time, the could-have-beens, and a kiss under the streetlight rain, seen in a movie not long ago.
Every sound is a cry. Owls do not sing; only scream. An out-of-tune piano. Bit myself when chewing bread. Electric light flickers. Weather report. Bread gone red. Sirens passing by in the clouds. Chirps at dawn. Death bird, rolled by car. Sundown chirps. No stars tonight.
Moonshine always landed on his face like a lingering touch as he reclined onto the bed. At midnight, the image of an acquaintance to whom he addressed countless poems of love haunted the corners of his vision.
Creaking throat. Hot, pale Chinese tea. Yellowed teapot. Voice of a distant relative. Warmth. Sweat. Another’s armpits. Screens. Eyes. Darkness. Dreams rise and fall like dark ocean waves. Sometimes raging, sometimes content. A half-remembered dream. Bursting moisture in his brain. Arrows between his thoughts. Fallen-apart slippers. Branches creaking with the wind.
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Alvin Chung is a second-year Law, Economics, and Media and Communications student at the University of Sydney.
