define [self]

Poem

By Rebekah Chia

noun

1. i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i

verb

1. don’t understand. the one time i let i love you dance on my tongue, in dark blue ink, it bled onto the skin of my teeth and through the pencil-thin gossamer i held to my lips. when i open my mouth, these days, all i hear is crackling flames, chimney to the hearth i’ve buried deep in my ribs. now smoke clouds the tongue-and-groove roof of my jaw. hard to trace the silhouette of anything out, these days. it’s been long since i last felt like i could breathe — too long.

2. there is sand in my lungs. there is an hourglass, half-filled with salt of the earth, cupped between shaky hands. i have several questions i never got to ask: how do i drag a metaphor from one finish line to another, how do i seal off this slew of symbolism i never meant to spill, how could i just stuff all of these memories down my throat and swallow it whole, etcetera. the hourglass is still. my lungs are half-filled with sand. oh god. i cannot breathe.

3. who am i, without you?

adjective

1. think about it: we could be in a renaissance painting, if only we’d face toward the light.

(of the mountain range that bridges the right side of my skull to the left) i’m sorry, i promise. it’s hard to think, see, over the billowing wind and the yodelling travellers and the blazing hot sunshine, but see, there it is — the space i’ve so lovingly carved out for you in my mind. please please step into the picturesque landscape. step inside and tell me you’d call it a home.

2. am i me yet?

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Rebekah Chia is an emerging young writer and dreamer by nature. Hailing from a tiny little island called Singapore, she has chased her passion for stories all the way to London, where she is currently studying English literature. Her poetry has also been published in the Eunoia Review, as well as in Pi Magazine, her university’s student newspaper.