Chang'e in Exile
They say she flew.
I say she was flung.
A woman drinks what was never hers.
The sky remembers theft like scripture.
The moon was not her destination.
It was a sentence.
She landed with her hair aflame, mouth full of names
no one asked her to keep.
No one tells you the elixir tastes like metal,
or that godhood burns going down.
She does not miss the archer.
She misses hunger, noise, and the heat of being wrong.
Up here, everything glows sterile.
Even silence grows a spine.
When she walks, the dust remembers.
When she speaks, the craters shudder.
Some nights, she carves her name into the dust
just to watch it vanish again.
Tell the children: she is lonely.
Tell them: she would do it again.
Inheritance of the Nine-Tailed Fox
My mother says
I was born with nine tails,
as if it explains
why I keep my back
to walls in elevators.
She says the fox
smiles with her whole body,
then vanishes.
At school,
I answer questions
like a fox might:
half-truths.
On the bus,
a man stares,
counting my shadows.
I change seats.
He moves too.
Later, I tell my mother.
She laughs.
I wonder if my tails
are warnings
or escape routes.
Sometimes they feel
like nine ways
to disappear.
Tonight, I lie awake
thinking how a fox
can live a hundred years
and still not know
if she wants to be human.
Because You Asked Me to Teach You Something Useful
Choose the soft dirt. Not the old kind,
no limestone, no graveyard mud.
Find the patch behind the shed
where mother once buried
a sugar spoon with her name etched in.
Dig shallow. It’s better if something still hears you.
The roots will tangle but won’t resist.
They’ve practiced forgetting.
Bring no shroud. Bring a braid of nettles,
a cracked barrette, the rind of the apple
you never finished. Nothing else.
The wasps are already tracing
your outline—exact, indifferent—
like they’re engraving you
into air.
Say your name aloud.
Once. Let it swell
in the hinge of your jaw.
Let it bruise there.
Pour the water slow.
No splashing. No forgiveness.
This isn’t a baptism.
The trees will drop their pears early this year.
Each one will land
with a weight you can feel.
Don’t startle.
Let the fruit rot where it falls.
This is how you offer a home
without making a promise.
Leave the hole open.
The ants need something to believe in.
If you find the spoon, don’t touch it.
Say nothing about God.
Just step back
until the air thickens
with wings you’ll never see.
My Mother Installed a Second Heart
after the doctors called hers unpredictable
She placed it
in a ceramic jar
inside a lotus bulb
that never opened.
At night, it clicked
like a pocket watch
dropped between floorboards.
She said:
one heart to survive,
one to remember
who we were
before this country.
She fed it
moth wings,
the soft teeth
from underripe peaches.
I wasn’t allowed to touch it,
but once I leaned close—
heard it ring
like rice rinsing
through a cracked bowl.
When my father left,
it glowed
beneath the kitchen tiles.
Now she keeps it
under her pillow.
It triggers alarms
for unspoken grief,
unclaimed history.
Mine will come
the day I forget
how to cry
in Hokkien.