UNMADE, CREATION

Daughter means so many things; not all of them good.

You told me a creation myth on my birthing: of a girl, a girl growing wings, spat from the mouth. Sticky with spit, drooping with scallop eyes. You said I blinked into your prayers, warmed with your reluctant breath, like words left nestled in a blooming yellow orchid.

Osmanthus dyed, dying. What did it feel like, to have spindles erupting from my crescent back, jade-boned branches cracking the ceramic? You asked but I could not answer, gums sticky with syrup fiction, dripping. A strange prickling between my shoulder blades.

I have to believe that we started with softness, like spiky blossoms skimming a moon-dipped lake. That distance has nothing to do with the natural world.

That at the beginning, before waxen-lipped time, before a rupture in motion, there was just a babbling girl. Clinging rainfall against your skin, like loam-silted breath. Peach perlite.

But fruit splits sour. An apple-flower fallen, far.

You told me you broke this world-egg, fed me continents fried into char. It makes you stronger you said. Every swallowed valley-full of bitter seeds I grew, grew into over-ripe sun; radiance seeping from scaled-skin like china flowers, wings unfurling like tangerine peels.

You told me you made me, mother. Stacked my spine a stone column, unbowed, bound to divined flight. Hubris curling into the suggestion of essence, up a lotus stalk, into ebony hair and blunt claws. Mandate margins, scorched. Stabbing the shatter-skies.

In this tale we break, off, each other. Now we slash mercury layers, skin-deep. Now we suffer immortally shifting lifelines, scrying to outwit thunder-fates. Now mother-tongue, twisted into a pained bonsai, strangles—

But in this creation myth I’d like to remake the world.

Where the jumping mountains level, the gods quiet down, the red dates ripen, and we speak without flames. And our wings grow inwards.

Like loose-leaf scales, like a legacy shrouded in yellow mist, like a love that made a world.

Daughter means so many things; all of them yearning.

CREATION, UNMADE

Daughter means so many things; all of them yearning.

Like loose-leaf scales, like a legacy shrouded in yellow mist, like a love that made a world.

Where the jumping mountains level, the gods quiet down, the red dates ripen, and we speak without flames. And our wings grow inwards.

But in this creation myth I’d like to remake the world.

In this tale we break, off, each other. Now we slash mercury layers, skin-deep. Now we suffer immortally shifting lifelines, scrying to outwit thunder-fates. Now mother-tongue, twisted into a pained bonsai, strangles—

You told me you made me, mother. Stacked my spine a stone column, unbowed, bound to divined flight. Hubris curling into the suggestion of essence, up a lotus stalk, into ebony hair and blunt claws. Mandate margins, scorched. Stabbing the shatter-skies.

You told me you broke this world-egg, fed me continents fried into char. It makes you stronger you said. Every swallowed valley-full of bitter seeds I grew, grew into over-ripe sun; radiance seeping from scaled-skin like china flowers, wings unfurling like tangerine peels.

But fruit splits sour. An apple-flower fallen, far.

Nectar frothing, frosted. Waning perspiration encrusting these beating wings, clawing out irate-rapture. Like winds of chance gliding over shoulder-blades, like gooseberry air against my skin.

I forgive our fault-lines, sometimes. But not the flowering thorns you shoved, fang first, to salve our shaken space. To keep from grazing too close the half-moon truths.

A savage swelling of flesh in flight, through silk-inked time. Here I ask you: what does it feel like, to not know how it ends? Fracturing the skeletal of an apology, jade-aching.

You told me a creation myth and I spat it out, like peach stones. Closed serrated eyes pitted against a dynastic destiny. A girl flying away, scattering pale-yellow petals like burial.

Daughter means so many things; not all of them good.