Content warning: This work contains depictions of self-harm/suicidal ideation, and alcohol and drug consumption.

Every morning you push the rock up the mountain.

You know how this story goes. Except

there are ten thousand rocks and ten thousand sinners,

an avalanche of futility.

Take me, please free me from this cage–

What cage? The cage

of your own ribs, crafted by your mother’s hands, 

callused from scrubbing woks and rinsing jasmine— 

They blossom their weight onto your shoulders,

wrapping around the crags of the rock, 

the base of your neck. Take them off,

Take them off now. 

Cast them into the rivers where the fishermen pray, 

into fields known only by daughters’ footprints. Take them off now and

peel apart your skin in the process, the severance

of the dermis and the epidermis, of

blackened tongue and porcelain flesh.

Let the rock slip past the sweat on your naked palms, let it

run its natural course of demolition. 

No. of course you wouldn’t. A toe grazes the line, and

your grandmother’s needle pricks your heel, and

you’re screaming. Look down,  

feet gnarled, a splinter of distended joints and 

half-scabbed sores, blood pooling in sunken dirt

like camellias crushed underfoot in spring. This is tradition. This is

the only way forward: One plaster-bound foot after another, one more step 

closer to the horizon, curved like the crescent moon

you once prayed to for release.