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Gloria Chen
She was:
- staring into the misty bathroom window
until it became a pond of water
- relieved because Adam was nowhere to be found
- hearing God’s call in a disco disk
- shaking her waist like Charlie xcx
wondering whether she was a song or a poem
She was:
- fearing she wouldn’t be beautiful anymore
or wouldn’t find someone who was as beautiful as she
- talking with her tarot packs, Apothic Rosé, index finger
- imagining she was trudging to a Victorian cliffstone
“Sermons in stones, and good is everything”
Was it original sin or doomed fate?
She was:
- thirst for something, anything, paper-thin
faith, contour, footsteps on the bustling pavement
- thrifting a golden 1970s Cartier watch with
or without diamond encrusted on
Her pale wrist turning to a haggard tree branch.
She wished
- he never loved Nietzsche, Ted Hughes, and André Breton
- he wasn’t trying to be a white whore
- she wasn’t trying to be a French woman
- they never fought about her calling Japan colonial
- her shoulders could stop recalling the scent of
wood sage and sea salt.
She wished:
- no more dolphin shows and plastic flowers
- to say “yes please” to strangers and “hell yes” to Heaven
- to like Wordsworth, Keats, and Austen
- to like rainy days, church rings, and gaining weight
- Future was not crucified on the yellow wallpaper
- to stop crawling in front of her princessly bed on which
she was singing that Sunday hymn on and on:
“Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again.”
- staring into the misty bathroom window
until it became a pond of water
- relieved because Adam was nowhere to be found
- hearing God’s call in a disco disk
- shaking her waist like Charlie xcx
wondering whether she was a song or a poem
She was:
- fearing she wouldn’t be beautiful anymore
or wouldn’t find someone who was as beautiful as she
- talking with her tarot packs, Apothic Rosé, index finger
- imagining she was trudging to a Victorian cliffstone
“Sermons in stones, and good is everything”
Was it original sin or doomed fate?
She was:
- thirst for something, anything, paper-thin
faith, contour, footsteps on the bustling pavement
- thrifting a golden 1970s Cartier watch with
or without diamond encrusted on
Her pale wrist turning to a haggard tree branch.
She wished
- he never loved Nietzsche, Ted Hughes, and André Breton
- he wasn’t trying to be a white whore
- she wasn’t trying to be a French woman
- they never fought about her calling Japan colonial
- her shoulders could stop recalling the scent of
wood sage and sea salt.
She wished:
- no more dolphin shows and plastic flowers
- to say “yes please” to strangers and “hell yes” to Heaven
- to like Wordsworth, Keats, and Austen
- to like rainy days, church rings, and gaining weight
- Future was not crucified on the yellow wallpaper
- to stop crawling in front of her princessly bed on which
she was singing that Sunday hymn on and on:
“Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again.”
Gloria (SC '27) is an English major who studies medieval old men but writes about cross-cultural womanhood.