SHENG KAO
red essay
I saw girls talk through red like it was nothing. Everywhere I see them, holding hands through red. Drinking red. I woke up and I smelled like red smoke. I remembered a dream where girls poured red wine into each other’s mouths. I saw girls cleaning red vomit off of their friend. How they made quick work of his bodily fluids. How it was there and then gone.
We love a woman who can be water-bearer. Hold blood. Have blood, and be quiet about it. Staunch the fish bleeding in the sink, scaly thing scraped clean, body becoming a scorched earth. We love a woman who can pare a body. Who can part a body. Who can make a grotesque body into food. We love women who can wield a knife gently. Who can strip flesh from bone, peeling back the world for the red. That violent work: a bisected papaya, a gutted fish, a skinned apple, everything becoming soft in my red mouth.
When I met the rabbit god it was with red ink on my hands. I asked for the simplest blessing, to sleep with magic in my hair. We converged in the dark of the mountains, my palms scored with wet lines. We exchanged food instead of kisses. Now I can’t bear to be alone. I can’t bear not being known.
The red vomit gone but still living in my red thoughts. I imagine a woman living in a different generation, young and beautiful. Before she knew she would be betrayed by her own blood. Before her own water tried to eat her insides. Water wants what it wants. I am unknowable and old like water. Like water in that I am always trying to better understand my blood. That I am digging deep for the fish inside me.
This is how I want to be: an apple in a girl’s hand.
Sheng Kao (she/her/hers) is the Web Editor of the Adroit Journal. She attended Oberlin College, where she received the Emma Howell Memorial Poetry Prize for her work. Her poetry has previously appeared in L’Éphémère Review, Apogee Journal, OCCULUM, and Vagabond City Lit.