your hands moved through me like water
yet here I am still unable to dive
into my monsoon mouth stained metallic
by bullets and blood come springtime
I rust leach lead into the hollows
of your bones fingers red-tipped and riveting
picture me a prayer picture me the rope
from which you’ll hang the mosque-dome of my skull –
my antlers polished to a knife-edge
sharpened to a tongue you’ll use to lick yourself
as clean as a throat or a promise
made to a small child not yet old enough
to understand sugar doesn’t mean sweetness
or that an open hand is only
an invitation to drown
Lyn Li Che is from Malaysia. Her poems have been published or are upcoming in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, BOAAT, Michigan Quarterly Review, Waxwing, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and others. She currently lives in New York City, where she works in tech strategy.