Déjà vu
by Tan Tzy Jiun
CW: self-harm, sexual assault, suggestion of eating disorder
Our hands are full of motherhood, the raw threads making up
the template has not changed. This face ate at this shop once,
and my arm was once my older sister. She was too old
too soon before I even knew we have the same
story, the one about a man sliding his tentacle
on a rock. Me, I pretended to be a door handle,
concocted an ocean in my cochlea until it passed.
I believed I was a witch, mixing cut grass and dead ants
in shampoo. When the moon broke water
for my age, I was wearing shorts for the first time.
Bloody between my thighs, I tucked my tummy
into a pill capsule. That was the nauseous beginning
anyway. That night, I ran into an empty grass
clearing to empty my body once and for all.
Funny how some things your mother just don’t teach,
like how to stay skinny. Or that it takes just one day to
make a woman against her will, a thousand more days
to sculpt her. She has to be browned and glazed.
Admit, you are the master ceramist yourself. You have lessons
you kept untold: why you never make the first move,
how you improvise a weapon, or who taught you
to hide where. Maybe it was all made up, everything
you said, everything I said. You who laugh behind
the fence. You. You who was I. You who said you who.
Tan Tzy Jiun is a Malaysian poet and theatre-maker based in Vienna, Austria. A graduate student of History, she is forthcoming in Fevers of the Mind, Quince Magazine, and Second Chance Lit. She has been published in Berfrois, Eunoia Review, Fleas on the Dog, Nether Quarterly and Postscript Magazine. She is also a co-founder of Exit 11 Performing Arts. You can follow her on Twitter: @tzyjiun_