From Stranger to Familiar

The clockwise rotating laser icon, the creaking drill, and the silhouette of a mechanical gait projected onto the dim concrete floor, yet unable to reflect high-saturation outlines. Dust in the air, with every inhale and exhale, devours unseen dreams and hopes, transforming them into tangible mortgage payments and debts. The apes who once stood tall here have shrunk into ragged worker ants. Black coffee, winding down the esophagus, no longer branches off into the trachea as it did at first. It has skillfully hoisted its weathered sails and navigates my taste buds. Just like the increasingly commanding posture at the workstation, skillfully puffing smoke through the glass window: the building blocks I loved to stack in spirals as a child are dissolving, collapsing, and gradually misting over. The guitar that once harmonized with Jay Chou also begins to mist over. The dragonfly net that accompanied me on campaigns by the riverbank also starts to mist over... and so do the classmates with whom I once shared drinks... I freely inhale and exhale the mist, swallowing Sun Wukong's somersault cloud, and exhaling the mist of my own life. I misted, I erred, and I realized, from unfamiliar smoke to familiar understanding. Carrying the old backpack, dragging the dragonfly net that accompanied me on campaigns, and holding my son's hand, I walk back to the fortress built with my life's blood and sweat. Tasting the familiar scrambled eggs with tomatoes, I begin to imagine that I might be living in a parallel universe—a figure playing 'Yan Hua Yi Leng' on a guitar. Yan Hua Yi Leng https://share.google/MeJ5nChE1QclJSWqF