Naomi Ling
self-portrait as unborn chinese girl
--tw: death, historical events, blood
Here, I am the womb of my own mother. consider
how it began—the wailing that cleaved our
girlhood, milky dissection. umbilical cord
cut. our limbs, pried from liquid decay, veiny
diaspora. how honest. I remember hands
breaking into the marrow of my throat. how
they killed something else, too—I didn't know
what. our tongues, sluiced and preserved in a little
red book. tell me how this ends, mother, how
we assumed the form of discarded angels, glassy
eyes puckered up at a cloudless sky. porcelain
wrists. a faceless man, arranging our bodies with
a chokehold of lust. there is no fairytale here.
I've always wanted to end quietly—how desperate
it seemed to leech the blood from your body, a cry
for attention like a righteous knife to motherland. yes,
to end like this, pink ribbons discarded
at the browbone of upturned soil. perhaps someone
will utter an elegy. in these last moments, I fist a happy
ending—see, a girl heading to the market
with rosy cheeks and ebony hips. she is alive. I laugh and
laugh in envy. oh, how I've always wanted to end like a
bird—a softened bullet, a trembling powerline, and then
a million feathers, carrying my body to the north star.
Here, I am the womb of my own mother. consider
how it began—the wailing that cleaved our
girlhood, milky dissection. umbilical cord
cut. our limbs, pried from liquid decay, veiny
diaspora. how honest. I remember hands
breaking into the marrow of my throat. how
they killed something else, too—I didn't know
what. our tongues, sluiced and preserved in a little
red book. tell me how this ends, mother, how
we assumed the form of discarded angels, glassy
eyes puckered up at a cloudless sky. porcelain
wrists. a faceless man, arranging our bodies with
a chokehold of lust. there is no fairytale here.
I've always wanted to end quietly—how desperate
it seemed to leech the blood from your body, a cry
for attention like a righteous knife to motherland. yes,
to end like this, pink ribbons discarded
at the browbone of upturned soil. perhaps someone
will utter an elegy. in these last moments, I fist a happy
ending—see, a girl heading to the market
with rosy cheeks and ebony hips. she is alive. I laugh and
laugh in envy. oh, how I've always wanted to end like a
bird—a softened bullet, a trembling powerline, and then
a million feathers, carrying my body to the north star.
Biography
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Naomi Ling (she/her) is a Sino-American student on the East Coast, USA. The founding EIC of Gossamer Lit, she also serves on the editorial team of four other journals. Her works have been recognized nationally by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Sad Girls Lit, and Top Ten Poetry and are forthcoming in Eunoia Review, FEED, all guts no glory, and elsewhere. She tweets unprofessionally @naomilingwrites.
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