Spots Of Time.

Four.

Pluck an apple from the tree of memories.

Wash, peel, layer after layer, unwind the red succinct ball of fur with specks sliced, licked, flicked, slowly savour, relish, paint or devour and be ravenous like an imposing ruler of a distant centennial leading to death in an unbridled conspiracy, the juices all washing stains of yesterdays in your gut. Is it like the pre-dawn of consciousness, that first bite, perception kicks in to cognizant awareness and understanding that an apple could have been blue only if the heavens were red?

I waited while I eschewed but returned and clung my disposition to articulating the few pondering objects flickering in the vicinity of the realm of my mind, akin to the rhythmic rays struggling to settle through the unchecked windows, upon the ceiling.

I waited and fell right into a dreamless slumber.

Like a Rip Van Winkle lost in deep ruptures of time, snoring through all those years in a haughty and haggard disposition, like a vagrant being admonished to the pits of hunger, being terrorised by the public for exile, my eyes blink and descry faint lights slow dancing, flickering and enthusing the hypnosis; when one is supposedly yawning after eons only to end up gliding and being sucked into the treadmill of time.

Sometimes the twilight lures you in, makes you question reality, uses the strategies of a person inhibited to methods of torture, precedent to the application of wiles and beguile one into forceful adherance and acceptance; slips in red pills before you lose access to your senses, the twilight carries secrets of the universe in cryptic verses. How birds sang in anticipation to a gleeful day, how those same species could trill and chirp in ignited passions, knowing the calmness of the moment before the storm and channeling all their grimaces into those incomprehensible sirens of the apocalypse.

They will always fly away though. They could always foresee the impending impediment. They are still bound to the contours of the sky. A nightingale and a sparrow still nescient, still cheerful to the incipient technology of the space.

Jasmine continues conjuring up in my mind. Like a photo montage, I float with her images, sometimes sitting with her at the embankments after all these years, sometimes smiling at each other through the visors when we're in her space, her world, her father's kingdom.

I wasn't sure how many years rolled by?

The wool that we used to gather by the sand and the stars and the moon.

"Were you ever here before?"

I ask Jasmine once we were in our idle selves, basking under her father's celestial object till evening came and the twilight took her away to her world again.

"I was always here." Jasmine says, and immerses her toes in the water.

"I wish we could stop clocks."

"I wish we could. Escape the obligations of the daylight savings, strike open the doors, chanting the declarations of our love. But you're a god, enchanting me ever, you're a god visiting your mismatched mirror, and I am just a mere daily worker, my queen, on this speck of a land."

"Ansteckend, I wish we could escape these crudeless boundaries. How I hope we could visit all realms and live our lives in these delusional mirages. I fear the spectre of time might punish us someday."

In the rupture with space and time, how the delicate wings of a butterfly could change the whole layout, the whole succession of ripples to a pool, either sequentially or in a manner convoluted, scrutiny was akin to itching and itching till the skin beholds specks of red, till red tinges and flames you up, pain addressing presence and an urge to apply closure to a wound.

If time was a torturer, how far would he go, would he be in a delirion or pass off our existence in its tendency in becoming nonchalant?

But time to me, the benevolent benefactor, I wish time would stretch again, let me in the realm where I could visit her, time a flower, a purple and pink with her specks, let me alight on to her, immerse with her toes, seep in the depths of the waves, tilt worlds till I find the knobless door and meet her again.

We were supposed to meet then, Jasmine and I.

I waited incessantly one summer afternoon. This was to be our second encounter in succession to preceding ten ones till one day, time split the horizon into two.

The horizon was a nebula on that day. Guns intruded in, seaships armed with gaudy bureaucrats and uni-dimensional troops and flanks.

Sometimes the butterfly stays static in the ceiling in her cold coloured veil while I burn a many midnight oil with the black on white scholars.