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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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the law of conservation of mass

By Malcolm Slutzky

 

it works like this:

things are never new—

just rearranged,

uncovered, broken

open. i was here

when the universe

unfurled & space

realized its

emptiness. i was here

when it bloomed.

a blooming. when

a small thing

becomes large

all at once & without

warning. we, of course,

do not understand

these types of things.

if you

think too hard

about it,

the law

does not account

for emptiness—

which did not exist

before fullness,

but can now be found

in all manner of

places. one summer,

i found an

emptiness.

it started in me

slowly

edges curling out

like the beginnings

of a flower. grabbing me

by the throat, stretching me

out & in. sometimes an

emptiness

is so large that a

thing becomes its

emptiness.

 

depending on

who you ask

i am a girl.

an empty one.

blooming.

blooming.

 

 

 

Malcolm Slutzky is a queer trans man and college student from New Jersey. In his free time, he enjoys studying physics and playing Scrabble against himself.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Issue Seventeen

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