I nurtured something in my chest you

couldn’t bring yourself to love.

So you kept me hidden, deep in a forest

where no one could find me,

the darkness an ugliness festering

under this, my pretty nymph skin.

But, Mama, he found me. He saw me

nourish this beast in the woods,

fell in love with the part of me that

no one else could, promised me a land where

I could be a queen and not another version of you,

a place where I could unleash my flaws and fury

without having to disappoint you. They told you

they could bring me back to you, to pacify your anger,

so you could bring back the spring.

Nikita Gill

The Window

after Marie Howe

Once in a lifetime, you will gesture

at an open window, tell the one who

detests the queerness in you that dead

daughters do not disappoint, free your

sore knees from inching towards a kind

of reprieve, declare yourself genderless

as hawk or sparrow: an encumbered body

let loose from its cage. You will refuse

your mother’s rage, her spit, her tongue

heavy like the heaviest of stones. Her

anger is like the sun, which is like love,

which is the easiest thing, even on the

hardest of days. You will linger, knowing

that this standing before an open window

is what the living do: that they sometimes

reconsider at the slightest touch of grace.

Mary Jean Chan

Obedience, or The Lying Tale

I will do everything you tell me, Mother.

I will charm three gold hairs

From the demon’s head.

I will choke the mouse that gnaws

an apple tree’s roots and keep its skin

for a glove. To the wolf, I will be

pretty and kind and curtsy

his crossing of my path.

The forest, vocal

even in its somber tread, rages.

A slope ends in a pit of foxes

drunk on rotten brambles of berries

and the raccoons ransack

a rabbit’s unmasked hole.

What do they find but a winter’s heap

of droppings? A stolen nest, the cracked shell

of another creature’s child.

I imagine this is the rabbit way

and I will not stray, Mother,

into the forest’s thick,

where the trees meet the dark,

though I have known misgivings

of light as hot hand that flickers

against my neck. The path ends

at a river I must cross. I will wait

for the ferryman

to motion me through. Into the waves

he etches with his oar

a new story: a silent girl runs away,

a silent girl is never safe.

I will take his oar in my hand. I will learn

the boat’s rocking and bring myself back

and forth. To be good

Is the hurricane of caution.

I will know indecision’s rowing,

the water I lap into my lap

as he shakes his withered head.

Behind me is the forest. Before me

the field, a loose run of grass. I stay

in the river, Mother, I study escape.

Jennifer Chang