The Window

Once in a lifetime, you will gesture

at an open window, tell the one who

detests the queerness in you that dead

daughters do not disappoint, free your

sore knees from inching towards a kind

of reprieve, declare yourself genderless as

hawk or sparrow: an encumbered body

let loose from its cage. You will refuse

your mother's rage, her spit, her tongue

heavy like the heaviest of stones. Her

anger is like the sun, which is like love,

which is the easiest thing, even on the

hardest of days. You will linger, knowing

that this standing before an open window

is what the living do: that they sometimes

reconsider at the slightest touch of grace.

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Mary Jean Chan

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