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      September 23, 2017ChildAudrey Zhao

      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 RYPA

      Audrey Zhao (age 15)

      Why do you like to write poetry?

      “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.”