Melissa Ho is a sixteen-year-old from Ellicott City, Maryland. She has been recognized by The National YoungArts Foundation, The Poetry Society of the United Kingdom, The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and more. Her work has appeared in [PANK], The Literateur, Word Riot, and elsewhere.
Alternative content
in the center of monsoon season,
your mother will wait—slowly,
wearily. your hands
will reek: slipping, sputtering,
chock full of monday
fish. at the end of the bank,
you watch three heads of tar-
slicked hair dip once
into sky-burnt dusk, not flinching,
only nodding. in june,
they will ask you to break wider.
open like an underbelly,
raw and white, clasping the oil-
glazed husks of a market
harvest, you will bend your wrists
backwards—ripening,
gasping for water, listening for
something to bury. on the oil-sodden
moor, three heads will dream
of an ocean. your eyelids wrinkling from
salt, the bridge of your nose
creasing like elbows, you will look for
a body: spaces between limbs, cavities
under lakes. on the edge of a
marsh, your mother, searching. three
worlds behind her, your hands
flatten into prunes. when it rains, you will
not think about drowning.