IOU (Poetry Preview)

theory of us

I.

there's a crackle, a fissure somewhere formed in the swollen flesh of your chest. the core of it, too tight for skin and haphazard in ways, roots and clings deeper than your reach allows; can't grasp it by the veins, by the soft fingers it sometimes offers. your hands tremble, because you can't reach in and extract it out. so it stays, curled up underneath your lungs. a silly, soft thing meant to be held gently.

II.

you ask how, because you've never learned the concept of being delicate. always too much.

                             too taut.

like how the oceans caress their waves. it whispers, hold them close until you have to let them go.

III.

and so, you let the too tight thing live in you. let it simmer between every breath. it's not meant to stay, you know, yet you still keep it there. despite the burn from where it frays. the still too broken tissue of where it sits, where it lays. everything still too fractured.

                                                   too sore.

IV.

the world catches on one night. the darkness blinks back at your face, wonders why you're glowing like the sea despite the throbbing scar under the silk of your clothes.

when you look up to answer, the world tilts in your vision.

V.

there is something missing.

the moon is no longer there. no longer hanging from its stringy laces, no longer submerged in the light salted sky that keeps blinking down at your existence on the all too small planet, watered down and growing by the minute. no longer where it's meant to be. your heart shifts. you too, begin to wonder. the stars turn to eyes, now watching. waiting for an answer.

who's the culprit?

VI.

something knocks on your small body when you can't find the words to say. the sound coming from inside. within.

and you find it there, the moon the world outside has lost, in the murky pits of your chest cavity, right where your heart is — what's left of it.

when you ask why it chose you, why it decided to be somewhere it's not meant to reside in, the answer is quiet.

it resonates.

VII.

and just like how it taught you, you become an ocean instead of the sea. you hold it right in between your fingers, let the too tight, too big thing that only knows softness dance in your palm. let it whisper one last thing, something it knows only you will be able to bury under the language you know best. it tells you it'll forget the time it lived within you once it floats back into the gemlined heavens, if you decide to set it free, despite the promise of not.

you still reach in and catch it by the wrist. it throbs. grows bigger. it scorches everything it touches in its wake as you uproot it from yourself. the once small fissure begins to rip you apart.

VIII.

the moon, once yours, floats back to where it belongs.

you begin to understand, when it doesn't cry as you let it go, the softness that grew within you.

(your chest finally starts healing.)

EPILOGUE.

you still find its presence in your reflection, sometimes.

but only ever at night.

when you remember that it once chose you.

"Theory of Us"

© Rizu Lu
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