(7.22.2020) Memories of Youth by Jacqueline Wu

When we were young, we woke up to Mama’s food and coffee, baby in her lap

With the mercy of the hot morning sun shining down on bright yellow sunflowers

In the garden with the old white fence


But all I remember is you and me from the lost postcard album

Blissful and happy, together with ice cream under the bright blue summer sky

At sixteen we dream first love, confusing passion and ambition lost in nature’s wildfire

Yet eternal in a thousand stars making their crisscross journeys to earth

For the moon comes out every night playing the sun, the light in the depths of darkness

Blinding us for a moment, too fast to see each other

I can hear the clock’s faint ticking, for time is running out for me and you,

But you’ve got to have life to love life, not sparing fractions of seconds

Fearful of the future, wasting a million existences in indifference

For in silence and old age,

We cry a river as we drown in the flood of emotions; overflowing

As we grieve a life not living, remembering the long forgotten in our minds

Until the curtains close, and death turns on the light