Content Warning: child abuse, sexual violence
The formatting for this poem may break on small screens, so a PDF version is available.
spider legs crawl at the hind of my neck
girl/ like twelve/ crying on her eighteenth birthday.
unclasp before the dresser mirror; a comb made of your father’s teeth:
saturday’s apple juice. sophomore drop-out. that time
you almost drowned in the pool. Shanghai’s skyline. BDSM.
touch me like a child/ that is/ i wish you hadn’t. throat
of fruit & tongue twist worm. swallow-swallow-swallow/
and admit:
all the women i hated
at sixteen- i’m in love with them still.
i want to come home/ for home to hold me in/ for a body that holds a home/
one that wouldn’t melt into chrysalis
when the kitchen faucet runs parched i take apart the
house (being my father’s daughter and all). fingers
deep in insulation plucking chicken feathers from pigs who’ve grown
Icarus wings.
how many women could i call home before i become the
town & its shame? this time, i pray to God for hands that do not
turn sour between their skin.
survivor’s guilt by the clock. & dream of being
a little more than worthwhile.
i cut the queer blood out of my wrist. score out potato eyes & hold
the head underwater.
every girl i’ve met is fifteen and forty-nine and
a boy in a wig three sizes too big. red on their knees:
Russell’s sign. hotel corridors. God is a black & white tabby biting
you and no one else. cracked lemon wafer. hands i would
sin to swallow. cananga petals rolled into smoke.
to be a daughter/ to love a woman that was once someone’s womb/
no one told me to kill the roaches under my bed.
suddenly i’m seventeen again in my college counselor’s bed/ screaming
red light-red light-red light/ skin scarred & still mine.
rented white cars
their blood-soaked backseats.
i blame my mother for something i’ll tell her a decade down the line;
because it’s easy (& i don’t know what else teenagehood is good for.)- Meet the Author
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YF Wang is a freshman at Wellesley College studying economics, cognitive science, and linguistics. She has been recognized by the Claudia Ann Seaman Awards, the John Locke Institute, Bow Seat, and more.