“Hidden Genesis” | Lum Chi | Poetry

Hidden Genesis

Lum Chi

In one famous tale, I am sculpted out of sand: tan, crumbled, and gritty. An anomaly from the green in the garden. In another, I am sculpted from his ribs, ivory and firm.

In each narrative, I am described as beautiful. Slim as the stems of the plants with large eyes as round as the rocks that marinate within the river pits. The icy paleness of my skin does the most to emphasize my beauty.

I am meant to be his partner. The air reminds me every time I sip it. An exchange, or rather a disclosure of purpose. My only.

It is because of him that I first believed a gaze solely emanated love. I continue believing it, if not more, when he let his fingers sift through the golds of my hair or took pride in the deep blue of my eyes mirroring his.

In the first tale, he laid on top of me. There should’ve been warmth in my belly, in my chest and in the tips of my fingers. Dissatisfaction penetrated all instead. An anomaly. I told him no. The love in his gaze shriveled,

deserting remnants of disapproval. Whatever tenderness had been there was as gone as my belief in his love. He tells me I am no longer his bride. The second tale ends the same way, but instead of “no,” I fed him lies, befell us into sin from the deceptions of a serpent.

In the tales, I’m slim-figured, pale like a porcelain doll. If the truth was valued, storytellers would detail how the soils of life are my skin, my eyes. Brown. Rich. With curves as rounded as the heads of mountains. And hair as kinky and black as the scapes of nightfall.

I wasn’t the second to be sculpted. Not from sand nor rib. I was the first. The sculptor of the sand, of the ribs. The air I sipped, I poured. And the man who told me he loved me was the son who chose to neglect me. “A ruiner, not a mother,” he spread.

The love I saw in his gaze was first felt through the kisses I pressed on him and the tenderness of my touch as I fed him the milk from my breasts.

A life-giver. This very world would not exist if not for the green in the garden I tended to. But here I am overlooked. And simply a painting of a porcelain doll birthed from sand or the piece of a rib.