Definitions of water

Evy Shen

thirteen & i’m reborn in the acrylic womb of the Jordan tainted salmon
with confessions; barren belly begging for absolution, my mother hunched at
the flooded bus stop—pink umbrella in hand. sense the washed moons
permeate your skin as you pass through the aisles in dread, cater-cornered
from the girls who pride themselves in the way their knees don’t touch. plead
for warmth, for mercy, monsoons in Suzhou, steaming brown sugar and red bean 
soup. watch as a cloud how your grandparents scrub the algae on the apartment
deck and the East River adjacent: matte and stealthy like an eel. how you wish
to sink below the green and surrender to grace. how you wish to bloom like a
lotus flower, your head tilted cardinally towards the sky, cheeks eternally
flushing with answers. but the cavities at the white beaches keep refilling
like my mouth with lies, body shivering with volume. recall these swiped tears 
after being called slant-eyed, making out the silhouette of your boyfriend
in the coffee shop, the trace of sweat on your feverish lip before your last exam. and 
be reminded of the last victorious match of tennis, the afterwards coquettish-red races 
of popsicle on bare skin, tracking swirls of saccharine: an imposter in your own land.
i mark my days with the water I bleed, the ginseng tea that torches my tongue from speaking,
the osmosis of serotonin and salvation. i open my mouth to a salt water gargle, my eyes 
to a dolphin tail submersed in the face of a drunken moon, my ears to another girl
sobbing in the shower.

Evy Shen is a high school junior from Statesboro, Georgia. Her writing has been recognized in an international Roundpier Poetry Contest and is published or forthcoming in Lumiere Review and Eunoia Review. She loves to travel, her favorite place in the US being Soho/Times Square in New York City, whereas her favorite place outside of the US being Suzhou, China. When she is not writing and furiously studying, she is outside with her family enjoying God's beautiful nature.