Time

By Alex Deng

Funerals and fireworks only exasperate the time;

the calender in the end: a vignette; what's the weight of time?

Everything I needed but I did not know, I see it there; 

it crumbles into the hourglass, here at the gates of time. 

“God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar,” says Shahid.

God? Lonely? Wouldn’t He be wine? Isn’t God soulmates with Time? 

You push the sun back up the sky, change the season on a whim;

in the darkness of our sheets and smoke, you dilate the time. 

A rocket flies over a hummingbird darting through the trees;

I finish my tea; too long. How do I calibrate the time? 

The figure in the dense fog that ends up being a street sign;

the fog changes its own meaning. I can’t recreate that time.

If you find it, Alex, let me know. I’m looking for it too. 

Never stop searching for it—if you do—you stagnate for time.

Alex Deng was born in Guangzhou, China and raised in Toronto, Canada. He loves eating noodles and reading poetry. Alex has appeared in Chickenscratch 2024, an anthology of Trent University student writing, and The Scarlet Review, a literary journal out of California State University, Northridge.