In Chinese, the word country is half
the word home: 家. Written before a name,
家 also means domesticized, as in daughter
whittling her ribs into toothpicks.
Daughter breaking clean
as a bowl. I grow full on
steam. I eat through all my leashes, swallow
a sky twice my size. I gather rust
between my fingers, my girlhood
grown out of. In this country, I choose
between living like an animal or dying
like one. Be the tongueless dog or the hunger
it was rescued from. There is nothing alive
about me. I prove it with a passport
photo of my birth: my mother unknotting
me from a length of rope. Someday
a child will slip out of my body
like a neck from a noose. Motherhood
an attempt at my own life. I envy birds
who fly domestic, their bodies
native to the same sky. Our wings
are alien, attached backwards, angled
wounds. Instead of flight, we learned
butchery. How best to eat from
our injuries. We blow on our cuts
like cooling soup. Serve me
in a corset, a country waisting me
so thin I double as a blade. My birth
certificate an x-ray. The doctor
counts my bones, naming each
a way he can break me. There is nothing
meat about me. I am all joint, all
hinge. My body opens
no doors. To enter a country, leave
me behind. Water your garden
with gunshot. What grows is a woman
stemless, seedless. I am always ready
for bite, for arrow. I am always ready
to run. How else does an animal
learn distance
as dying. How else do I
learn home
is my hunter.
Kristin Chang