They live inside the warmth of typing fingers,
inside the ghostly glass of hidden years
you wanted to implant inside this week.
The doors and windows to expanded time
are out of sight yet wait beneath your thoughts.
You are content with your approximations
but try to go much deeper into time
that you produce but cannot see and touch.
Your wells are full of timeless years you author.
You drink their shining but don’t dare to bathe.
And suddenly, the years you have created
begin to fill and learn the world around you.
They rush through every pore, unchaining colours.
Your world of hardened time begins to soften.
Two types of minutes start to greet each other—
inhabitants of a divided country—
and travel swiftly through the fallen wall.

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Alan Zhukovski’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The London Magazine, New Statesman, Ambit, Tin House, Agenda, The Threepenny Review, Plume, Gulf Coast, Asymptote, Orbis, Blackbird, The Fortnightly Review, and elsewhere.

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