Now is the time to stop thinking about:
the shape of my wrists, tomorrow’s maths test,
her gleaming eyes behind those heavy glasses,
the callus on the inner side of my right index finger.
I am standing in front of the school gate at noon, disentangling
my wired earphone just washed ashore from the depths of my schoolbag. White lines
clutch my fingers like
Ariadne’s thread, leading me to some grand reveal
I knew not, but felt
with the four valves of my heart, the twitching ache in my wrist
brain dazed from trigonometry. The world
is turning on my fingertips, rewind unravel reveal unwind.
A goddess who weaves the thread of fate stood
in a blue-and-white uniform, waiting
for her yarn to disentangle itself, so she may mount her bike
and leave the crumbling world (read: school) behind.
Now is the time to start thinking about:
the weather forecast, the harvest, the Politburo,
a band reuniting to start the miraculous 2025
the peeling graffiti beneath the great cement bridge
where my bike is parked interrogates me:
未来多久才来？ Some twenty years ago a student
her head wrapped in the same blue uniform coat now slung across my folded arms
climbed up these orange walls and jumped,
skipping evening study sessions to empty spray paint cans, asking When
does the future come?
Intricate characters blurring into tear-soaked mascara,
I have to squeeze my eyes to read the words. The tension
beneath my fingers snaps. An indiscernible sigh and a feather
whooshing past. I pulled my wired earphones into two pieces.
As I cycle home I think about how both
the ancient Chinese and the ancient Greeks connected loose threads to death,
and of the oracle written beneath the cement bridge; entertaining
the thought of having wrecked the future
on my fingertips.