Portrait of Gemini
BY GRACE WANG
Summer; Mother sends me to Beijing to learn about love.
Instead I meet Lina, who insists there is no heaven.
Lina,
painter’s hands stained in my mouth.
Our bodies so similar
it aches to touch her,
but my limbs bend harp-like
with the thrill of it.
I dream of this salvation,
the line of her hip in red silk,
and she tells me about “坏,”
one Chinese word
for both broken and evil.
Her tongue forks. I forget to listen.
Like all girls,
we value ourselves
in numbers.
I count pounds
and eat cherries
and think that I am 坏.
August simmers away—
before leaving, I realize that
Lina and I,
like two celestial bodies
hanging
from the same green stem,
bruise flesh between a clatter of frames.
And yet,
the fire of a little god
spins to life
whenever she kisses me.
I do not tell her;
instead I say how lovely it would be
to spend an eternity on a favorite wall,
unchanging,
painted wetly
like a portrait.
