Symmetry
       

How our bodies domesticate
                    disaster: by swallowing

another country's rains. By reining
                    my jaw to the sea, my bones

lurched into boats. My breasts bitten
                    into apples. My mother says

women who sleep with women
                    are redundant: the body symmetrical

to its crime. Between your knees
                    I mistake need for belief

in a father figure: once, we renamed
                    our fathers by burning them

out of our bodies, smoking the sky
                    into meat. I have my father's name:

张, meaning archer.
                    I consider coming clean

through you like an arrow. I consider
                    the way we shape in bed, like the sea

has revised its shoreline & we
                    the country it moves to meet. Every language

has different words for the same
                    want. I name you the body

of water my thirst is native to.
                    When I kiss you, I remember

every silence begins inside
                    a mouth. Everything edible begins

as a bird. At night, birds peck
                    peepholes into the dark

the way I have always
                    watched women: in the distance

between a girl & herself
                    is an entire body

bulls-eyed, arrowed
                    holy. A girl castling

her voice into a throat
                    of stone. I kiss you & forget

to turn on the dark. I taste
                    salt afterward, trace

where light through a window
                    veins your body, its wanting

to reroute your blood
                    someplace safe.

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Copyright © 2018 Kristin Chang All rights reserved
from Past Lives, Future Bodies
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission