Poetry by Millicent Sharman
Art by Maxine Gray
In the freshly felt air there is a weight of warm humidity, thicker than the tiredness, thinner than the lifelong string holding us four together. I see everything in orange: the ice cream in the airport vending machine; the fifty-yen coin pinched between my fingers; time, though time doesn’t have a colour. When we load into the bus, I see friends falling into sleep and it is the flaxen shade of a velvet pillow in my living room. We walk to the wrong hotel through bends of shadow and mist, potent, as though the rain chose to sleep midair. My caution carries the tang of a ripe mandarin. Breathing in auburn unfamiliarity and sewage, my lungs learn a new posture, and ineptly, I slip my hand into the palm of worldliness. I pull my camera’s film advance lever and its hidden image feels like a childhood grapefruit, eaten with a fork. I am not burdened by the lens—rather, entrusted. It is nighttime here, still we exist in the hue of sunrise.
Saffron strands against
the colour of a new soup.
Harmony unfolds