Christina Wang (17)
Entero/ On Growing Up
Here’s a horrifying story birthed midst my youth:
You see, I keep having these nightmares while the sun’s still chasing mid-latitude clouds, they’re midday mares, you couldn’t confuse them with the more tame dreams of the night.
Two darkened figures chasing one another across the landscape. Reminds me of those art paintings, you know, the vague ones, you can’t see them straight. Let’s both be witnesses.
See, there’s me. Peter Pan collars dress me in that flat youth and forever innocence. She’s wearing one too, so I don’t suppose you could tell the difference. We two look rather similar, in fact, identical, actually, at least from here. Sometimes, I look in her eyes, and they’re younger than mine, or maybe more worthy. Sometimes, I’m not convinced she’s not me. But you know, it’s there one moment and then it’s gone. I don’t know who she is, or who she’s supposed to be.
We’re fighting, hands pulling hair, fingers burning against skin. I don’t feel any of the blows, or at least I can’t remember them. Then, all of a sudden, she’s got me pinned down. I’ve got her pinned down. I’m not sure. There’s just me and her, and there’s my darkened baby neck, and there’s my knife!
Which one is me, you know, the one you see before you? Because those hands, they’re mine, I can tell you, it’s me that’s resisting. My wrists, I don’t know why, but they ache, like in another time there’s someone trying to throttle them. I’m pressed against the taste of grass and dirt, and I know if I let go, I’ll be consumed by that rapacious blue sky. But at the same time, my fingers curl perfectly around the hilt of that dagger, and my bloodlust, it rises when I’m holding it.
I can feel that knife, how she sings to drum out all that is uncertain. At night, she dreams of fear in the eyes and how it dissipates as they roll back. But it’s not just that knife, I feel it even when I’m not holding her. The will to hold the end in my hands, however unfairly wrought. No, it has to be me.
I’m torn apart in the battle of brawn. I think I’ll give, and yet I don’t. She, too, refuses to go. Between blinks, I am between bodies. Then at last, there I am, knife in hand. The velocity of the swing, how it felt to plunge. It’s not intentional, but somehow I always end up here.
Most times, it replays, like God’s cruel gift. I’ve only dreamed of an ending once, where after I stabbed, I felt it. She doesn’t run easily like shadows from sunlight, how I expected, she stays right there. I cannot ignore the glass-like cutting pain in my fingers. I didn’t think that victory would feel like this. I’m throbbing with the savage, oppressive beat of the world and, like fond susurrations, all else slips away, even her.
When I come to, it is me sunken in the ground, I don’t know where she went. As I stare up at the pinpoint blue in the sky of my grave, my cheeks crackle, sore with the distinct sense of crying out, this time from the center of the Earth.
My hands burn as I climb out. The glass shard sensation lingers, with promise of never fully healing. The white Pan collar hangs limp around my neck and tears away like tissue. As I am delivered to the world once again, far different from the first time, I no longer feel like who I’m meant to be. I don’t think I meant to do this, even if I didn’t doubt myself the whole way through.
Christina Wang is a student writer at Milton High School. She has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Competition. She is an Atlanta Youth Poet Laureate Finalist and has attended the Kenyon Young Writers’ 2019 Program. She was an editor at VOX Teen Communications and has been published there as well as Crashtest Magazine, Blue Marble Review, DoveTales, and An International Journal of the Arts, among other online publications. She speaks four languages and lives her day-to-day life passionately. She is always in search of something interesting.
Entero/ On Growing Up
Here’s a horrifying story birthed midst my youth:
You see, I keep having these nightmares while the sun’s still chasing mid-latitude clouds, they’re midday mares, you couldn’t confuse them with the more tame dreams of the night.
Two darkened figures chasing one another across the landscape. Reminds me of those art paintings, you know, the vague ones, you can’t see them straight. Let’s both be witnesses.
See, there’s me. Peter Pan collars dress me in that flat youth and forever innocence. She’s wearing one too, so I don’t suppose you could tell the difference. We two look rather similar, in fact, identical, actually, at least from here. Sometimes, I look in her eyes, and they’re younger than mine, or maybe more worthy. Sometimes, I’m not convinced she’s not me. But you know, it’s there one moment and then it’s gone. I don’t know who she is, or who she’s supposed to be.
We’re fighting, hands pulling hair, fingers burning against skin. I don’t feel any of the blows, or at least I can’t remember them. Then, all of a sudden, she’s got me pinned down. I’ve got her pinned down. I’m not sure. There’s just me and her, and there’s my darkened baby neck, and there’s my knife!
Which one is me, you know, the one you see before you? Because those hands, they’re mine, I can tell you, it’s me that’s resisting. My wrists, I don’t know why, but they ache, like in another time there’s someone trying to throttle them. I’m pressed against the taste of grass and dirt, and I know if I let go, I’ll be consumed by that rapacious blue sky. But at the same time, my fingers curl perfectly around the hilt of that dagger, and my bloodlust, it rises when I’m holding it.
I can feel that knife, how she sings to drum out all that is uncertain. At night, she dreams of fear in the eyes and how it dissipates as they roll back. But it’s not just that knife, I feel it even when I’m not holding her. The will to hold the end in my hands, however unfairly wrought. No, it has to be me.
I’m torn apart in the battle of brawn. I think I’ll give, and yet I don’t. She, too, refuses to go. Between blinks, I am between bodies. Then at last, there I am, knife in hand. The velocity of the swing, how it felt to plunge. It’s not intentional, but somehow I always end up here.
Most times, it replays, like God’s cruel gift. I’ve only dreamed of an ending once, where after I stabbed, I felt it. She doesn’t run easily like shadows from sunlight, how I expected, she stays right there. I cannot ignore the glass-like cutting pain in my fingers. I didn’t think that victory would feel like this. I’m throbbing with the savage, oppressive beat of the world and, like fond susurrations, all else slips away, even her.
When I come to, it is me sunken in the ground, I don’t know where she went. As I stare up at the pinpoint blue in the sky of my grave, my cheeks crackle, sore with the distinct sense of crying out, this time from the center of the Earth.
My hands burn as I climb out. The glass shard sensation lingers, with promise of never fully healing. The white Pan collar hangs limp around my neck and tears away like tissue. As I am delivered to the world once again, far different from the first time, I no longer feel like who I’m meant to be. I don’t think I meant to do this, even if I didn’t doubt myself the whole way through.
Christina Wang is a student writer at Milton High School. She has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Competition. She is an Atlanta Youth Poet Laureate Finalist and has attended the Kenyon Young Writers’ 2019 Program. She was an editor at VOX Teen Communications and has been published there as well as Crashtest Magazine, Blue Marble Review, DoveTales, and An International Journal of the Arts, among other online publications. She speaks four languages and lives her day-to-day life passionately. She is always in search of something interesting.