your eye, a face of the earth coming up for

air from the snow. the more you sweat in practice,

the less you bleed in battle, you always told

me but Uhmma, i’m not like you: that is to say, i’ve

not evolved from wanting to bleed onto the

earth to signal that i’m home. i keep opening my jaws

wider for a yeouiju the size of your father’s

grief but you, you swallowed your yeouiju a long time

ago. did it hurt, when that part of yourself

burned? dragons are said to be divinities of rain who

end droughts but Uhmma, why then am i

standing in front of the shallow graves you wear as

a birthmark, gripping a lighter in one hand

and drenching them in gasoline & mother’s milk in

the other? how heavy was i in your arms

when i was born, Uhmma? the dragon is said to have

nine sons but Uhmma, i am one daughter.

daughter / got ‘er / slaughter. i’m not like you: that is

to say, i escaped the slaughterhouse even

though you were slaughtered at five years old when

your korean name barred you from a

japanese kindergarten. do you forgive me for looking

for your skeleton, curled into a sickle, in

every silence? dragons are said to be manifestations

of evil but Uhmma, i never meant to grip

your name and split myself in half with it. one: the

daughter you wanted. two: a dirge. your

forked tongue, sliding between silence and salvation.

you were born in the year of dragon but

five years later you transmigrated into a rooster, the

antithesis of dinosaurs who reincarnated

themselves as the specter of flight in a promise that

they’d never be eaten alive again. Uhmma,

i’m trying to make the four divinities real. that is to

say, i’m trying to make you more than a

myth of minority perfection & incense smoke. i’m doing

my best to remain a blind portrait on a

folding screen but Uhmma, how can i keep myself

in a womb of golden chains when it was

you who gave me your own painted eyes? tell me

i’m not just seeing things. tell me, please

tell me that my feathers are for something more than

a ceremony at the slaughterhouse. tell me

that you don’t blame me for not being like you: that

is to say, that it’s fine if i alone can hear

the wind sloughing across a dragon’s scale, tracing

the wound of our genealogy. a melody i’ve

never heard performed by anyone else, Uhmma.