The Slipping of Time

A crooked room, a flame at the edge, a soul insists on burning.”

The Slipping of Time (2025) — Oil on canvas by Joey Embers

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Every day I return.
Some days the brush speaks, spilling color like truth too heavy to hold.
Some days it is silence — a chair waiting, a room listening.
But I come back, to remind myself I still exist.

This painting, The Slipping of Time, is that return made visible.
A room that refuses to sit straight. Floorboards stretch too long.
A chair leans without rest.
Doors open, but tilt away into uncertainty.

In the bottom corner, a candle spirals upward.
Off-center, low, almost overlooked — but its flame bends everything around it.
Walls lean. Shadows curve. Nothing escapes its pull.

Beneath the table, a snake glides through the glow --
silent, patient, certain. A hidden force given shape.
The cat crouches close, tail twitching,
curiosity flickering against caution.
Two lives in tension, waiting to see who will move first.

Above, a bird perches inside on the crown molding.
Impossible, yet exact. Silent, still, unblinking.
A witness that does not belong, yet refuses to leave.

These figures are not decoration.
They are presences: fire, danger, witness, curiosity.
They live in the same crooked space I do.

When I paint, I refuse to straighten the lines.
I refuse to fix the distortions.
I let them exist. I let the silence, the tension,
the stubborn flame at the margin all find their place on the canvas.

Because this is the truth of how it feels to move through time,
through work, through life itself:
Not square. Not steady.
Tilted, alive, unsettled.

I hang my soul on the wall every day.
This is not collapse.
This is not ruin.
This is witness.
Stand here with me.

Let the crooked room settle around you.
And you may feel it too — the flame at the edge of yourself,
the one that insists on burning,
no matter what tilts around it.