Blue Candles,
Blue Tides.2024
Dolly Qianyu Wu
In a city without a sea, a young woman suffers from a strange weekly ritual: every Sunday, inexplicable growths appear on her skin, only to vanish by Monday. This cycle breaks when a giant, sentient blue candle mysteriously appears on her windowsill. The candle becomes her confidant, guiding her on a surreal journey through time and space. She encounters multiple versions of herself and meets an old man, a friend who lost his leg to the ocean tides before moving to this arid city. He offers her a blue antidote, a tangible piece of the sea that stole his past and her memories. This is a visual poem about identity, memory, and the parts of ourselves that die and are mourned, asking how we reconcile with the tides of our own body and history.