by: Yin Fei

when we could never wash 
ourselves right.

i knew when we picked at scabs of wounds
with our freshly muck-filled fingernails and 
when each dent recoiled
so that the prints and patterns 
left long legacies
on that lustrous caramel complexion
 of a substance,
i just knew that we had been cut 
until the craters caved in.

i knew because the nimble fingers reminded me of
times where we tried to splash in puddles 
to water away the broken mistakes,
clean the minerales within the slip of the earth,
and erase the seams of the sewn-up flesh
as best as we could with a singular Band-Aid.
cause it named the days we decided to pay the dimes
 of a ghostly visit
and i saw those hands still groping,
still molding until the pressure 
left steamed bruises, proving natural hesitance.

i knew when the clay bonds were forced to speak 
since its tracks of every girl and battered bitch
could tell the story of those that touched
before you, before me,
before we knew they wanted to say no.

This was a poem I wrote last year after taking a ceramics class at my school for the first time. My teacher, who was demonstrating how to form a pot with a certain technique, told us that we had to be gentle with the clay and to be sure not to crease it while flattening it out, as it may potentially revert back into its previous bend or even break when in the kiln. In explaining the process, he also briefly mentioned that we should try to treat the clay as though we were touching someone else’s skin. When he said this, I immediately pictured the pot as a metaphor for a more feminine figure and the supposed treatment of women from when we were young. This further prompted me to think about how different people tend to wield their comments and their physical speech with the purpose of shaping girls into specific standards as they age, as well as how these strict molds, when enforced, can undoubtedly affect the disposition of a woman and could alter her character in negative ways. Though I understand that this can be applied to others (not just females), I, as a woman myself, have noticed this consequence to be extremely apparent amongst my fellow females, and I wanted to speak a bit on my own perception with my writing. Through this poem, I ultimately hope to shed a bit of light on the subject, and to encourage that we all try to be a bit more conscious of what lessons and morals we choose to teach girls, especially in their early years. There is also an attempt to acknowledge the sexual subjection and abuse that some women have to endure throughout their lives. I hope to raise awareness for these issues and to support women who have experienced these incidents.