Tinted Dust

Through the course of a Chinese evening ransacked by worries of the mind and pillaged by doubters of the present, I realised there is something missing in my life right now - Flowers.

Flowers to sweep aside the dust of the past and salvage the colours of today.

The city of Xuchang, Henan is pretty but bare. The leaves barely cling to spindly trees. And the flowers? There just aren't any flowers. On some days, the dry loess wind rips the leaves off, which then lie asunder on the streets. Dust filters through the air, your thoughts and the tiniest pore of your being.

And my flowers. Where can they grow here? How can they grow here? Or is it perhaps just the off -season? But my mind tells me it can't just be winter, there were no flowers here even in September. Perhaps spring, if I am still here, might reward me with a few colours but for now my eye can only see what my mind can invent. The rest are a blur of grays and browns tinted in dust.