litany of humility (grant me the grace to desire it)
Lilirose Luo
Content Warnings: allusion to sex, blood, broken bones, self-harm
Mary, tell me how you did it. The dirt under your nails and your writhing
liquid-gold hair reinvented by heavenly interference. You waited, and you bore fruit.
I have been waiting sixteen years, and still I am barren. Last August I let a
worshipper peel me open like a swollen pomelo, soaked his fingernails in a lingering
raw pink. If I asked him to consume me alive, I thought I could quell
my own permanently etched want. This year, I tried to baptize myself a million times under
the mildew-stained waterline of a bathtub but I couldn’t stop myself from inhaling anyway.
Crucifixion on my childhood bed, couldn’t stop myself from screaming. Mantra–fied my
devotion, I know the rust. I know the blood. I know the cracked ribs, couldn’t
stop myself from begging to be bandaged. Each time how my mother found me. The
bandages that she swathed me in, unfastening quietly as a dove’s receding trill.
Flaxen hay thrumming a brittle pain in her mouth, still there were no daybreak
shepherds at the door. I wish I could say I pleaded hollow and light
like the songbirds outside of your nursery, but the truth is that I bit the meat of my palm
uneven with hunger. The thing is, I tried to be consumed but my body is a thing that requires
patience– God invented the saying Don’t bite off more than you can chew as a warning label
for my girl-bones. Next August, I’ll begin to pare off my thighs as penance for my greed.
Mary, tell me how the sparrows sing instead of screaming. When my mother was still
a child, she trapped one with a clever length of string and tied it to the edge of her windowsill.
It hung itself the next day, net turned noose in a moment of panic. Feathers exploded like
overripe fruit. This is a metaphor somehow, but I don’t know if it is about my mother or the
dying sparrow.
liquid-gold hair reinvented by heavenly interference. You waited, and you bore fruit.
I have been waiting sixteen years, and still I am barren. Last August I let a
worshipper peel me open like a swollen pomelo, soaked his fingernails in a lingering
raw pink. If I asked him to consume me alive, I thought I could quell
my own permanently etched want. This year, I tried to baptize myself a million times under
the mildew-stained waterline of a bathtub but I couldn’t stop myself from inhaling anyway.
Crucifixion on my childhood bed, couldn’t stop myself from screaming. Mantra–fied my
devotion, I know the rust. I know the blood. I know the cracked ribs, couldn’t
stop myself from begging to be bandaged. Each time how my mother found me. The
bandages that she swathed me in, unfastening quietly as a dove’s receding trill.
Flaxen hay thrumming a brittle pain in her mouth, still there were no daybreak
shepherds at the door. I wish I could say I pleaded hollow and light
like the songbirds outside of your nursery, but the truth is that I bit the meat of my palm
uneven with hunger. The thing is, I tried to be consumed but my body is a thing that requires
patience– God invented the saying Don’t bite off more than you can chew as a warning label
for my girl-bones. Next August, I’ll begin to pare off my thighs as penance for my greed.
Mary, tell me how the sparrows sing instead of screaming. When my mother was still
a child, she trapped one with a clever length of string and tied it to the edge of her windowsill.
It hung itself the next day, net turned noose in a moment of panic. Feathers exploded like
overripe fruit. This is a metaphor somehow, but I don’t know if it is about my mother or the
dying sparrow.
Lilirose (she/he) is a student and poet residing in California. When she's not writing, you might find her loving the ocean, learning to bake (as a love language), or thinking about her unwritten manifesto about online communities as spaces for accessibility & redefining self!