Vicki Lin
all things oriental
on a gold-washed morning, my mother tells me about the
pearl & how it is torn from the flesh of the oyster’s
gaping mouth. yellow run through with red, an arrow, a soundless scream.
& what can be done with this hurt but carried around,
like an extra organ, a third lung?
she prays for a spoon in her mouth & all she gets is a knife
in the form of language, the syllables of this land cutting her mouth open.
she has been holding her breath for so long now
& i wonder if water remembers the shape of everything it touches.
if it remembers her skeletal hands, veins and sinew, forever reaching for
something better. this dawn-eroded land is just another promise
waiting to snap between her fingers. dust and splinters, nothing more.
but the end line is this: i am trying so hard not to become
another body beneath your blade, another life hollowed of varnish.
pearl & how it is torn from the flesh of the oyster’s
gaping mouth. yellow run through with red, an arrow, a soundless scream.
& what can be done with this hurt but carried around,
like an extra organ, a third lung?
she prays for a spoon in her mouth & all she gets is a knife
in the form of language, the syllables of this land cutting her mouth open.
she has been holding her breath for so long now
& i wonder if water remembers the shape of everything it touches.
if it remembers her skeletal hands, veins and sinew, forever reaching for
something better. this dawn-eroded land is just another promise
waiting to snap between her fingers. dust and splinters, nothing more.
but the end line is this: i am trying so hard not to become
another body beneath your blade, another life hollowed of varnish.
Biography
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Vicki Lin (she/her) is an aspiring Chinese American poet and writer born in New York. She currently lives in Florida and is a junior at Bell High School. She enjoys drinking tea and having educational conversations, when she's not reading and writing. Vicki has won various Keys from Scholastics Art and Writing, and looks forward to expanding her horizons even more.
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