Tree-watching (Your gaze)

Young Minds of Medium Anger Call

Photo taken by myself in Central, Hong Kong’s central business district. In September 2018, one of the most intense typhoons on record hit the city. Damaged tree trunks like this are common sights since then. Have people forgotten about them already?

Little did you know what it’s like to be naked. I stood in front of you unclothed, raw and profoundly vulnerable. Any passers-by could see through my put-together feelings as self-fashioning, like continents forming a map which you think can trace back to my beginnings.

I absorbed the air that you exhaled, and you inhaled the air that I exuded. It’s the least I could do, but you never said anything.

I wonder if my nakedness made me feel desired or unwanted, if it made me feel exposed or protected. But above all—I want to know if my nakedness was at all beautiful to you?

But you never said anything.