if you want to find the truth it is lemon and chocolate haired from the womb the factory fakes have it black licorice call the next door girl the same but their shoes fall off in the house of some broken language
buy hair potion at Kroger rinse off chemical goop to reveal a crown of southern flowers
behind wondering not which Asia but if the papers say Lily or Samantha what kind of Sunday mornings when the UV index is high
still my roots grab me like overgrown arms through concrete sitting with the southern accents forming high school sports like not speaking english anymore
crying over spilled acetone
the bathroom mirror stares back a wound rising at 12 pm has eaten ramen 2 nights now or maybe its been 3
I tell myself - to heal, fix her like wifi disconnect, then reconnect forget the network if needed
so I sit in my room gather bottles of girlhood
wrap in citrus mask infuse with midnight lavender scented smoke
reach for the acetone to fix her nail polish - it knocks over like a glass domino
the Gracie Abrams song plays about losing the love of her life clear goo peels the varnish
Dolce
the french say forte is strong but light fire in nighttime for blink after blink in the grass to scream dry lunged symphonies come too weak for even the bugs to hear
but one day holding you in the grass at the end of the phrase smelling like your blankets cheeks between my palms guide my veins warm the same
sit in dolce on my tongue like late weekend milk tea
whisper a symphony that comes out louder than ever.
What if I am breaking again
I made a vision template: pilates princess diet yogurt bowls organic fruit write quiet mornings stretch learn grow go on a walk in a matching sweat set from Brandy Melville heal
but below my feet is a mound of socks I don't feel like washing and slates I don't feel like dusting.
The paper I've yet to read sits at daycare - I have forgotten to pick her up today and yesterday before yesterdays
Her along the presentation due tomorrow, that healthy diet I was supposed to be on, and the nose I used to love but looks too big and pimply now
I fill myself up the glucose makes my blood weak and everything else I thought ran through my veins.
lemon cleaner
On Sunday my church fingers pray for world peace at 11 the countries play russian roulette at 12
Sunday is healing I clean my room Vacuum suctions craft pristine feet walk marble polish so sunshine diamonds glitter morning. They smell like lemon cleaner and remind me that I am alive
My father treads with wonder "It looks nice in here" he says wrinkle smiled like fanning out butterfly wings
breathing steady with the leaves
Sunday the leaders point guns,
the living room TV sirens white lady in curls says the bombs are our friends it's hard to believe her when I know my friends do not act genocide
Sunday they watch the fire vomit charcoal and rubble taking their people by the tongues
the smell of flesh must remind them that they are dead
I sit to look at their sick cities alongside my perfectly made bed
to the boy who called me a “ching chong”,
as you turn to your friends in the rushing car and laugh you won’t think much after the kill.
you’ll drive to your little house with the white picket fence where you lay on your back, rotting on blue light and dopamine, while I leap into the tigers den, feeling the nails claw me to the daughter my mother sacrificed her home for makeshift happiness in this foreign land, you’ll
laugh at my persistence as if I chose the nights on end just for the sake of being a joke, you’ll
attend church with your parents on Sunday and walk out feeling like a godly man, forgetting I am his child too
and when the seasons shift and high school is over, your parents will coddle you for acceptance to college while I drown in shame for rejection from an Ivy League- in the shadow of my big sister.
but when september brings the sweet taste of Mandarin flowing off of my tongue, that flavor you dulled to “ching chong”, the thin curves in my eyes, like coy-fish beneath the spring leaves, and even the laboring heart whose pulse beats like my mother’s
when it’s time for my body, it will bloom like a lotus flower in your country cradling the american dream your happy cities feed on
so you will see the human you speak to: the yellow flesh holding veins flow a century’s old culture collapse to people like yourself
so you will know that
I know the roots that cling me to this earth like a willow glued to life but what grounds do you stand on?
Zoe Zhang 