I have narcolepsy.
Timeless,
spaceless,
everything pauses.
People stop dying,
weather ceases changing.

I can pass out for minutes,
hours or even months.
I never remember exactly how long.
I forget how to remember
and remember how to forget.
That makes my life easier and livable.

Every time I collapse,
I see George Clooney,
the sexist man alive in 1997.
He is a philosopher on beard.
His beard is an exposed secret,
not mysterious, but seductive,
growing on his naked chin,
like low grass sprouts on a piece
of bare land.
It emerges from the tiny sweating pores –
the spines of an urchin,
salty and dangerous.

Women also have beard, invisible one,
he believes.
That’s why they buy shavers.
Her beard is a disguise, like make-up and glasses.
It reveals what is concealed.
I slide my palm on his chin,
the sound is less peaceful than hymns,
more forceful than speeches.
It’s a tasteless,
weightless,
lifeless
marker of time.
Why can my own lips and
beard never embrace?
I wait, and wait to turn his beard into goatee
without coming round.

Nicholas Y.B. Wong