CHILD
The first day in spring in 1998,
you realized I would not move your womb.
The doctors said it would be alright.
Next day: “She’s suffocating; your womb buries her alive.”
I came out red and swollen,
an angry thing disturbed too early.
I fought grasping and swallowing the world whole
and you did not know how to protect
a thing so delicate,
one who did not see how close
it was to simply not existing,
to simply disintegrating and falling
apart like the placenta, the afterbirth,
in hydrochloric acid.
I fight you; this is evident.
You sigh forever and hold me close.
—from 2017 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
__________
Why do you like to write poetry?
Audrey Zhao: “It’s strange to see this poem again three years removed and still know the reason why I write poetry is simply because I can and want to—there really is no other more profound explanation.”
