Thoughts that go through my head at the table when by Sarah Zhang
the waitress asks if I want anything else. I think
Yes, I would love to have my eyes rounder,
like large cantaloupes of sinew.
One time, at summer camp, I closed
one eye and found nothing in the other,
so I winded up my imagination
like a toy bird. We found nothing
but darkness, which was cold
and made a loud metal sound
when I knocked on it; it reminded me
of Sister, who was cold and screeched
when I prodded her forehead. Mother
carved her from alabaster, and me
from rough granite, so that during weekends
she could take her jaded sculpture
to meet with other Aunties
and I could stay at home,
flushed and angry with myself. I wanted to be
one of those girls who caught tadpoles
writhing between long fingers with gashes
in her torn skin, mottled
of sumac - it’s a hollow attempt
to wash away, as if bruises
are cheap transfers stickers bought
at the Staples that rounds the liquor store.
I teach myself that there are two timelines:
one where I didn’t trample the little dayflower
that I had seen caress the corner
of my eye every day, and another
where the peaches whose skins I revile
do not blush when I leave them to sundry.
In the first, Mother held me up
to the sun like a fool, so I could taste
the tangibility of dawn - how she gave
me everything she couldn’t have, sinew
spinning life between every vein and bone.
In the second, I had inhaled the eddying fog
along with traffic exhaust, and hunched
against the cold, the last tangy taste
of childhood leaving my tongue--
“No, thank you,” I say.
Sarah Zhang is a Chinese-American rising sophomore living in the Philippines. Surrounded by a community filled with diversity, Sarah aims to share the vivid aspects of her cultures through her poetry. Her works have been accepted in Eunoia Literary Journal, the Daphne Review, K'in Literary Journal, the Heritage Review, and have been honored by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In her free time, she plays tennis with her sister, and likes New York style pizza.