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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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Collision Theory

By Vivian Lu

 

A body wilts

over time. If aging is a catalyst

and death a point of collision,

we constantly react,

desperately resisting forces of nature.

Our bending limbs must snap someday.

We’ll weather

whether we want to or not. (Fade with me,

into uncertainty, into a sunset that never ends.

A room with sharp edges and no windows.)

We can no longer deny age

when our fathers decay to gum, no teeth,

welts on their foreheads

like death’s branding label, marking what

is his, what has always

been his. We know collisions

with too little energy

do not create a reaction. Why does

it surprise us now

when our cells produce less

bone marrow, our skin refuses to cling

to our skeletons, like it

once did? Our children will have children

and these human beings

will come into contact with absolute orientation.

Time spills

through the gaps of our fingers, like silica,

harbingers of the end.

And when we reach the point of collision,

all we can do is hope

that the remnants of our reaction

yield something sublime,

something untouchable by time itself.

 

 

Vivian Lu is a junior at Cherry Hill High School East and the Editor-in-Chief of Bitter Melon Magazine. Her work appears or is forthcoming in National Poetry Quarterly, deLuge, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. Her writing has been honored by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Live Poets Society of NJ, and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. Beyond writing, she is the Founder and Executive Director of The Axon Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to increase accessibility to neuroscience education for high school students.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Issue Nine

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