Damp fever ravaged the gardens for nine months. I plumpen. I leech juice out of the muskmelon. The husks fertile the soil.
Tumbling from branches. Rounded little perfections. Garnishing
the graves. Swollen fingers clumsy the pipa. We wilt side by side.
Maidens hushed up the bank. Shorn. Sheared. Putrid on the floor. Spoilt
fruit. Bemoan the bad meat. This girl did not choose to be a woman.
Queen Mother of the West with a gnarled back. Her heartstrings knotted again. Paint your cheeks pink, she says. No one wants to see your red.
She bloodies her lips with the juice of apricots.
Rake the bark off my skull. Our blood flows thicker than sap. From spring tide to spring tide. I grow lush. I grow hidden. My heart flutters up and out through the trees.
And so I ripen. I lay down my own dirge.
I embroider with my barbed wire and wait.
After harvest. No fruit left to pluck.
