Hot Pot Magazine

By Jessica Hsu

my birth certificate. Both my mother and father told me they could not
remember the time I was born. I like to think that my bleary eyes grew

hungry for stars. When I tumbled out, I dreamt of every single scattered spot
of light flocking magnetically together, I sought to lay mine next to the Star of

Bethlehem, & I found holy texts sunken into my mind in strange voices. Blasphemy,
every prophet would mutter, at these words. I swear I saw the signs of the coming

of my body in its bloody arrival, bruised from all the stories spilt recklessly
from my ancestors’ tongues. On a carrier designated without blessing, legends

scramble to latch on. Listen as they pursue a monkey emerging from a rock, make
a sea from the blood of Ymir, judge the tragic beginning of Helenus of Troy. But

always my heart unfurls for Noah and his Ark, the Ark, the animals aboard
the Ark—everyone, from the snarl of the leopard & fluttering of bats’ wings

to the mewing of the lamb. So I picked apart the narratives, lost memories retold,
oxygen from repeated breaths slowly rusting the gutters of my house, & I asked,

why the sheep were praised so amply, why the sheep were butchered the next
page, why the sickly sweet tributes of sheep? When the water recedes, I heard

the remonstration, the whispers conveyed through prototyped figures on an altar
& a goddess’s image imprinted on precious rock. When I send my thoughts to her

—& occasionally to Him—for the day’s punctual closing, I remember my father
kneeling beneath the altar for no more than minutes. I envied drops of water

rolling down my skin without needing to know where their destinations lie. I envied
the bliss of not knowing when stories flicker & truths lodge in the mind. I now know

the time I was born, as the sun burnt me with a kiss
in the year of the sheep.

Jessica Hsu is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, Her poems have received Hopwood awards. Outside of writing, they’re busy attempting to keep their aloe plants alive.