Whirlwing Daughter

eggrolls should be rolled tight. they taste better that way & men like them like that too but Ntxawm is thinking about girls & one time one asked to hold hands during a school field trip. & one time at school is asked about what or who she masturbates to & at home is asked why no boys like her but all she can think about is tight eggrolls & their glass noodle insides, how they’re packed then thrown into bubbling oil. & girls, she’s thinking about girls. their insides. the thrust into the world that breaks them. there will be an alive girl & just one time Ntxawm will let the girl kiss her without overthinking it. it will happen at the hmong new year’s festival in the triangle shade of a papaya salad stall, a current of red goldfish staining their teeth. the static bubbles over & her skin tingles. all she thinks about is how another person can swallow you but still make you feel so whole. now she knows for sure but uncertainty still sits in her stomach like graveyards that can never really leave her. they will clasp hands and balloon through the crowded alleyway of booths, dip under hanging plushies & silver lock xauv & chip-toothed grannies humming over mugwort & dried bark. their ball toss will be magical because who says a ball toss must be between boys & girls. briefly she will weigh the peony-embroidered ball in her hand, and in the next, it’ll be eating air, rainbowing into girl’s hand. like passing words between tongues. she will return to mom just in time for the upcoming stage performance of a folk dance & mom will say, “i saw a girl who looks like you.” her heart will stutter but mom will continue, “but her ankles were slimmer & men wooed her with earrings” & Ntxawm will reach up to pinch her smooth earlobe. twenty girls parasol onstage, their pear blossom skirts beating back wolf whistles & “hot damn i can see under her skirt.” suddenly Ntxawm can feel her legs, how they stick to the wooden bench. suddenly twenty girls onstage metamorphose into forty legs & she can’t stop looking & guilt bubbles up thick and hot like wheatfields. the sky heartburns over & it’s time to go home. the moon is a wheel tonight & it is a watermill at the back of her throat, dredging bits and pieces unrecognizable but so much like laughter that she’s buoyant off it. she chases bb bullets with her teen cousin who disappeared after he was outed, afternoon light mosaic-ing his face into a lantern that eats the light then holds it. there he is, the kick of his heel. the tell of his elbow. there it is, the mountains, saddlebacked with wax flowers, the one he will soon noose & throw over his shoulder. where are you? where did you go? where & where, where—he goes riding with the wind, slicing through fish belly light. throws over his shoulder: “i know too & really we’re all just waiting for you to say it.” years later his body will float up cold. she wonders if it was the love that did him in, so full of it he sunk & if he’s floating now she hopes that means he got to take it with him. aunts & uncles will welcome him home one last time. he comes back the same way he left: eyes closed, only this time without tears. mom receives a midnight phone call, a distressed auntie blabbering: “i saw his ghost, standing under the bridge. i swear i saw it, his chest traffic-light red like a fiend.” that’s only half-true. on a corduroy night, in a house folded into the corners of small town america, Ntxawm receives a midnight phone call. his voice statics like electric rain: go chasing the wind. you have seen the newborn sun. she guesses that ghosts appear to you the way that you love them.