I’m Surprised We Ever Met | impossible

I’m Surprised We Ever Met

Elyssa Chou

---

impossible

Jonathan Chen

I’m surprised we ever met—
we were in the dark, the
streaks of light swimming around us. 
It was warm, and you could hear the slow 
pulse around us, the soft murmurs echoing 
out into space. It felt like a candle flickering 
in the night, or was it a match, the first 
blaze of a fiery new beginning?

We’ve wandered in the shadows,
hidden from the world in our little eggshell.
You can hear the people talking, talking about 
us like a secret, wanting to peer in like 
a boy looking into a fishbowl, 
his eyes widening at the first sight of movement.

I can feel the push and pull,
back and forth like tides without a moon, 
the flutters in my belly rising and falling
with each moment. We miss, we pass by, 
and I breathe like it’s the last breath I’ll ever
take, too caught up in the luck of it all,
seized by the impossibility.