Horse Girl

Jimin Lee

On the dining table, I impregnate
my mouth with peaches as I watch
the laundry bake in the lemon sun

outside. Once it dries, Grandma
irons, wishes she could do the same
to the parchment skin of her palm—

every crease a creation myth untold.
She is crooning again, & I wonder
if she misses her childhood spirit.

When Grandma looks at me, she says
horse is bad, horses bad for girls.
Peach-juiced, jaded like trodden

snow. I was born in the year
of the horse: the untamed beast
I am, blind to the taste of hunger.

Horse, tell me how you earned
your haunted face & your eyes
tainted with your bloodline.

Horse, I can’t bear to look at you,
so I imagine myself as a rabbit
hiding in the moon’s footprints.

Grandma says that it is a shame
for a girl to be something wilder
than herself, that rabbit

suits me better for a name.
I want to bathe in whiteness
& cake myself in powdered sugar,

magnolia-scented like good girls.
I want to taste what it means to be good