Violence from a distant land entered my landscape through a screen.
The man held captive shared my last name.
Dressed in orange, his image lodged itself in my vision—
in the back of a crow pecking at persimmons,
in the ashes of a fire festival,
in the everyday scenes I thought I knew.
Since then, I’ve been painting the distortion in how I see,
knowing it will never return to what it once was.