RHO BLOOM-WANG
For The Rival Body
I’ve stood before the mirror until my mind was foggy glaze
peeled curl from my head with the heat you smoothed in
seared out the river and told my swollen fingers:
rip black blankets from eyes
scoop out brown crystals and replace
their hollow with light pulled from plastic jars.
You said you’d hold me when I was just eight
make my plate slim and teach me to do pushups late at night
you said this will make you beautiful but it didn’t erase the shape of my face.
For the preschool kids that foretold a baby sister
emerging bright blonde and blue but like me her hair grew into
the lion-sheep-beast they called me before you sheared it all off:
clumps yanked then cut until it disappeared with my name
so why won’t you exempt me now? why aren’t you happy yet?
like those kids who’ve grown up they always complain:
they froth they frizz
they call it ugly but
I think that word is for me.
For the blond in our arms now
we praise her gold freckles
lime eyes but I wonder:
is clutching her the closest we get
to gold I wonder if she’d keep talking
about those people with a lean figure cut frame:
nice body if she knew how her words press cold into the fat
on my hips if she knew how we dream of slicing it off in hot sheets of pink
if she knew about the mirror but she knows about the mirror and about you.
For the woman with two lion-haired children
flat-iron in hand as she speaks about my not-nice body
conspires with you to introduce me to the glass on the wall
that stores my distortion in every string of its reflection
I’ve reflected and found:
you’re her enemy, too.
And I know they say your enemy’s enemy is your
friend but I won’t befriend you anymore because,
enemy, you’ve squeezed into every nook of my mind
tiny parasite eggs nestled in the squiggles of my brain
you’ve taught me to be my own, enemy
so you may live on
each time I twist my fingers into the form
that forms scars from soundless screams
I guess you can have me, enemy
just please don’t make me anyone else’s—
enemy.
Rho Bloom-Wang is a writer and activist from Los Angeles who resides in Pittsburgh. They currently serve as the Youth Poet Laureate of Allegheny County and the Poetry Editor for Starry False Lily. They are a winner of the Oakland Sidewalk Poetry Contest, an Honorable Mention winner in Poetry from YoungArts, and the recipient of a Gold Medal from the Alliance for Art and Writing. In response the recent attacks on transgender youth, Rho organized an event highlighting trans art, writing, and existence as a form of resistance. You can find their work in Qommunity’s Revive, Plaid Literary Magazine, Saturday Light Brigade, and elsewhere.