RIN YANG
cw – violence and blood, allusion to hate crimes
shifting plates beneath our bones
i’m so scared of a monster that’s never smashed my teeth out,
but it’s hurt you it’s hurt so many before us and i carry the fear of it in my bones our bodies,
archives of a torn past, passed down to us unknowingly a patchwork network of nerves and scars
layered on top of each other in a language that we don’t understand until we do- my heart, they don’t love
us they don’t love us for us they love the winners they love the golden children they
love the glare of a medal so bright it can burn out the otherness of our skin they love what wins, not
who. this world has a gapped tooth smile, white canines bared as if to warn away rather than
welcome we tried to fill in the vacancies and find a use for ourselves the way that we were
taught to, but still we find ourselves wanting you’re just not a good fit no matter how hard you
try it’s spaces so many spaces and they’re only an excuse away from breaking our bodies to fit
into the gaps to make it all make sense i love you, i want the whole world to love you the way that
i do but they’re never going to love you in a way that’ll keep you safe forever not another
home just an other body, pale and shaking they were killing you even before, bleeding the wrong
humors out of you while i curl up against the curb, covering my eyes and covering my face i was
trying to make a word i was trying to tell you that when fall came we’d both die, that my parents
have been quietly preparing for the fall of our lives for years now it hits, now it hits like a quake,
i’m on the floor trying to hold back tears and maybe it is a quake an invisible quake that
cleaved the floor of our local greengrocer into two an invisible quake that split open the street where
i found your grandmother holding onto you in the cracks this invisible quake, a killing wave
and it rises and rises with no sign of a final crescendo cruel melody of a country who puts its own first,
damn the rest and all those who come in and take our jobs my love, no one else sees it but us. no one is going to
save us other than us we, alone, came into this world of suburbs and dead end jobs with
no chance of promotion we, alone ,will leave it my mother holding my head in her arms even as it
all comes apart, years and years and years all washed away gray water gurgling down the gutter know
this, beloved you can have as many homes as you want you can love whoever
you love, but there’s only ever going to be one mother, one mother and you can replace her
however you want you can tighten your tie and change your name and spit in her face for the
approval of others but an adopted child is not loved like the original and the time for
realization is now, against all of our wills no matter what lies they try to tell you blood is so thick
it gushes from his face a wound that can not be stemmed, too long spent
under skin too long spent festering away in broad daylight people keep telling me
about the violence in the bodies i want to scream at them to make it all go quiet
if blood is thicker than water, why do the tears keep coming, why does the blood keep
flowing? surely one of them has to outdrown the other but they won’t stop not until we are
all pulled under.
Rin Yang is a poet and high school student. Their work has previously been published in Ghost Heart Literary Journal, warning lines literary, celestite poetry, and others.