Derek Chen (15)
A Sense of Place
Twilight falls on the mountains,
Ever distant in a picturesque
[Unreal]
Landscape,
The figures on the cliff observing it
The end of a day
[World]
In still life.
I had just awoken from a dream,
And there I was
Standing by everything I had forsaken
In the form of my old violin teacher,
When the magic hour descended upon us like a gentle wave
Submerging the little glass fragments
Scattered in aimless patterns on the beach,
Its magnanimous arms tugging them softly downwards
Until they were nothing but mirages
Drifting into a sunken paradise
Lost.
I wanted to apologize to him then, in that freeze-frame of passive motion
To the old teacher whom I had never truly appreciated
And whom I had left behind
With only silence,
But the words would not form
The time would not come
So we just stood there,
Admiring the distance
In silence.
This he said to me,
When the time of nostalgia was almost overdue
When darkness would soon be upon us,
With no one to judge left, right, or up from down
And no one to see
Which directions we would choose:
“The light in the window is always on,
If you know where and when to look
And why.”
This he said to me, in a vision of clarity
In a voice as distorted
As my own.
I wanted to reply then,
But he was gone by the time the thought came
And darkness descended upon me
Like surfacing from an endless, empty dream,
Only to find myself floating in an endless ocean of grey
Built on questions of what to do next.
There was only so much time left then
To judge between left, right, up,
And down
Derek Chen is currently a sophomore in high school. He spends his days eating, procrastinating, and sleeping.
A Sense of Place
Twilight falls on the mountains,
Ever distant in a picturesque
[Unreal]
Landscape,
The figures on the cliff observing it
The end of a day
[World]
In still life.
I had just awoken from a dream,
And there I was
Standing by everything I had forsaken
In the form of my old violin teacher,
When the magic hour descended upon us like a gentle wave
Submerging the little glass fragments
Scattered in aimless patterns on the beach,
Its magnanimous arms tugging them softly downwards
Until they were nothing but mirages
Drifting into a sunken paradise
Lost.
I wanted to apologize to him then, in that freeze-frame of passive motion
To the old teacher whom I had never truly appreciated
And whom I had left behind
With only silence,
But the words would not form
The time would not come
So we just stood there,
Admiring the distance
In silence.
This he said to me,
When the time of nostalgia was almost overdue
When darkness would soon be upon us,
With no one to judge left, right, or up from down
And no one to see
Which directions we would choose:
“The light in the window is always on,
If you know where and when to look
And why.”
This he said to me, in a vision of clarity
In a voice as distorted
As my own.
I wanted to reply then,
But he was gone by the time the thought came
And darkness descended upon me
Like surfacing from an endless, empty dream,
Only to find myself floating in an endless ocean of grey
Built on questions of what to do next.
There was only so much time left then
To judge between left, right, up,
And down
Derek Chen is currently a sophomore in high school. He spends his days eating, procrastinating, and sleeping.