IOU (Poetry Preview)

through the looking glass

I often think about how my neighbors preached about the murder of cats that questioned their creator, and how godless strangers grow up with no saints. no hands wrapped around their neck — void of confessions, of the innate denial, unshackled by the idea of mouthing, hearing, seeing out of line. no echo of prayer, no watching eyes within the soggy walls, no trace of the stench from the rotting varnish of the pew permeating the stale air as the stomach swallows in on itself, knees bruising from the weight of the conscience, imagining how eternal fire boils flesh since you can never truly proclaim your faults in earnest because all you'll ever be is human.

do not fear.

(only fear god.)

I think about the sacrifice, the damp matter staining the sheets, the altar boy, the insidious touching hands that hold the holy chalice, the tongue that can say no wrong. for it is easy for religion to close its eyes. justify. find an excuse in god.

(but never use his name in vain, they say.)

I don't stop thinking about the wild cries of being torn apart, the animal instinct, the laving crowd, the blood thirst, the burn, the purgatory, the creator—the mammoth that is the question.

the question that you can never ask, for it is a
sin to ever wonder. pray, my child.

(seek god.)

there is no use wondering. there is no need to wait for an answer because the white rabbit always escapes. that is fate. you can only go down from there.

fall through the ground or live blissfully unaware. do not fear.

once you follow your curiosity down the rabbit hole, nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. and contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. and what it wouldn't be, it would.

look within yourself.

(but never look far enough in the distance that you can see glimpses of the truth.)

"Through the Looking Glass"

© Rizu Lu
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