Elucidation Blog

  He keeps nervously glancing down at his watch. I wish he would stop. He’s so at peace when he’s won over by the waves of the fountain, returning to a familiar rhythm that I don’t quite recognize. But I know how it feels to have that intimate memory encoded in my most tranquil of feelings. I just want to go home. “I just want to go home,” I tell him, out loud this time. This lost, whirling homesickness boils up with the nausea from all these fumes around me. The old man checks his watch before looking up distractedly at me. It makes me twitch. “Listen, kid,” he sighs. “I’m no free man. I can’t just take you back to wherever you’re from.” He lifts the clock face to mine, as if the analog display somehow justifies his urgency. There are remnants of an ancient watch tan sitting between two permanently sunburnt patches of his sinewy wrist. “I’ve got to go.” He taps the glass as the showering fountains behind us shut off with a click. “5 o’clock.” I’m left there, staring down...

  Whispering beetles were a familiar language to me. I used to see a glimmer of their light radiating from a tiny dot out into the wide-open air. I could exist with the trees, mimicking their steady sway as the wind flowed through their leaves like it did through my hair. The trees had all the answers I needed. My favourite were the timid creatures who made a quiet home and rested contentedly in their nests and burrows. Sometimes the curious ones would pad out, hiding meekly in the underbrush as if asking for permission to greet me. They spoke my language too. Now in the discord of the city, a car pounds past me and engulfs me with its shadow of cold, smoggy air. It’s gone without a second glance. Cars never hesitate. They don’t leave that fuzzy feeling of warm fur in my fingers, only smoke. The birds here are different too. Nothing more than plain, black boxes with one beady hole for an eye. They watch me impatiently while hiding themselves behind flickering red lights. Most...