Heart and All That Tender

Bite into my name, O summer sun

Bathe me in hibiscus, flame

Once crowned my mother’s hair

As she peeled mangoes, gold-slick,

Their juice running down her wrists

Like stolen honey. My maiden flesh

Already turned red and rebellious.

Unclasp me under June’s hummed song,

Where the porch swing creaks

A lullaby of fireflies. Naked dames

Under the nymph-like moon, we once

Danced in slips of cotton, barely there,

Chasing the jasmine’s sigh

It smiles now at our heart-laugh,

Tender, tenderer, dawn.

O, the years are sticky as fig pulp,

Split open under noon’s blind eye.

I remember the salt of her neck

When she lifted me from the tide,

My small hands full of shattered shells.

Now my words, plucked like petals

By the wind’s wet teeth, rush

To your farthest tide. I am the absence

You press to your lips: the ghost

Of a girl wading through shallows,

Her shadow a blackberry stain

On the sand. Shore, carve your maladies

Into me.

I am the wound and the water.

Kneel here. 

Drink my womb-blood dry.

 Ohona Anjum Jui is a poet and the author of The Fermented Journal. She is also a contributing writer at The Daily Star. Currently, she is a third-year undergraduate student at Leading University, studying English literature and language. Her academic interests include literature, film philosophy, and socio-political history of art. As a poet and creative fiction writer, Ohona explores nature’s influence on human existence, mysticism, spirituality, and grief in her work.