Her Bloody Sunrise

Her Bloody Sunrise

i.
dark, cold, and damp
she sits curled in her precious cave,
glistening with stalagmites of red blood.

the city roars symphonies
of honks and screeches
yet she exists in a dark universe
so close, yet so distant

small, and nothing more than a tiny beating heart,
she patiently waits in her mother’s uterus,
lungs awaiting their first breath.

ii.
thirteen. thirteen candles wrap the room
in a warm glowy light
sparking what is a chain of memories
spanning thirteen years outside her cave.

thirteen. the wax dripping off thirteen candles stains my cake
as blood stained on the pale linen of my pants that day.
that day, a sun of blood rose from a sea of white,
as taunts of

“Weirdo.”

“Freak.”

stained my conscience beyond repair, for
the same paint that painted the walls of my first home — their first home —
has become a subject of ridicule.

iii.
the daggers they threw at me at 13 harm me no more
for it is the same blood
that has bathed him in his mother’s womb;
that created a life out of nothing.
it is the same blood
that will bathe his daughters
it is also the same blood
that will shame his daughters

no longer do i fear the rising red sunrise that appears every moon;
instead, i greet it, embracing all it means
to be female.

– Sena Chang, 2020

(This poem first appeared in Ayaskala Literary Magazine.)