mother nature’s first law is that

the strong survive. thus you must

become an unbreakable daughter:

forge a will of iron in your bones,

under the pressure of floors

shuddering from father’s footsteps.

make it brittle in fluorescent classrooms,

at grandmama’s grave, burning jinzhi.

somehow your hair has become

thinner than mother’s.

stitched too loosely to your scalp,

like grandmama’s itchy black string.

it snaps easy. snaps the way

your papery skin will crack apart

the day your hardened framework

overcomes your body’s octagonal temple:

bones protruding inward, outward,

spearing organ, vessel

(just another collapsed cicada shell –

cracked underfoot, a summer smear).

when that day comes, i promise

to break your bones for you.

you have 206 to spare,

but only one heart (and maybe,

parts of it are still soaking up

the ink of rundown stationery stores

that we left behind the year you grew up).

so i will wait:

to twist your skeleton between my fingers,

like the rotten wood of a temple’s corpse –

protecting the heart, lest bones squeeze

all thought of rest from between its valves.

i have thought: stay since we met
mother nature.

when you leave for life,

as grandmama gave herself to death,

i will whisper: sister, i am sick,

but you are too tired to save.