Poetry: Girlish, Too by Stephanie Chang

I follow home the lunar wire of bone and breath. Thank you, moon.

Thank you, mother, father. Tomorrow a man will squirt my eyes

with plum juice, crack open the earth on my proud forehead.

A rabbit will visit my bedside and hand me the definitive contract

for my future: barista, lawyer, magical girl. I want to feel the closest

thing to want, before the hospital bed resurfaces on every bed

of grass I lie in. I can be a little girlish, too. In this white kingdom

that delivers Capri Sun by IV drip. The wet currency of love

so slimy in my hands. I take a knife to the bathroom mirror,

copper the scales off my backside, coming up with angry

welts of anemone. Coins oiled in the memory of steamed fish.

Then my mother materializing in the backyard, the one we

never had, spider-limbed and screaming for her husband to come

home, can’t he smell the supple meat, stinky tofu, pineapple buns

we pressed between her thighs. The hymen we melted in a hot pot

broth. Tell me the story where I was born vomiting color, paradise

fortuned in every fold in my palms. That night, so terrifying

did I ever tell you about it? The rabbit multiplying by the millions

each time with the wrong face. Tessellation of red paper snowflakes

and sirens. I wanted to forget every garish smile. I never woke up

so fucking alone. Girl who was never supposed to arrive home

in such a ruined body. This Midwest town of miscellaneous cosmic

horrors. Let me cheer you on by the finish line, dress myself in

miracles that don’t qualify as miracles. At least they will do for now

at least for us. Don’t cry. At least we can say there’s still a heartbeat

to the crime scene. The bones of rabbits warped across the end

of the world. The rabbit rolling its head into my lap, rolling into

dough, then a moon of mortar, where my eyelashes grow into lilies

then fields of laughter. There are more things unbroken here

than what they could possibly have you believe.