"punctures" poems - Hello Poetry

In Đà Nẵng my friends cradled me like a child. We screamed Taylor bridges, tequila-toasted in bars until the lights blurred. A single candle in the bathroom danced warm sighs through open windows, and all felt calm. I grew new muscles balancing on a motorcycle, sometimes gripping Harry’s jacket, sometimes throwing my weight into the wind. The city flared neon and gasoline in stuttered traffic, but along the coast he drove so fast the vibrations in my chest harmonized. I pictured my bones becoming butterflies if I let go. I had entered the Year of the Dragon on a futon, swayed to half-sleep by a hundred chanting voices from the temple next door. I did not dream of dragons. I only learned to breathe fire. At midnight Bailey stood at an ancestral altar, kumquat branches, apricot blossoms, red envelopes, wine, burning full sticks of incense, and smoking half a pack of Esse Lights. This is how the year turns over safely. Tết is not about faith; it’s about continuity. The Year of the Snake slid in with new bones and old habits. It hissed that suffering could be scripture until letters slithered free from the page and coiled like cold jewelry around my wrist. I didn’t make it for Tết that year no silk áo dài, blood orange, too big for a body that learned shrinking before it learned staying. That was the shedding. Salt water peeling old skin away, songs shouted so loud they drowned the ache, poems that did not start tragic, nights when my body finally kept time with the moon. At home the water did not move. At home the dog’s teeth found my hope. A terrified mouth rerouted rivers through my soft parts. A jewel carved from my nose. Six punctures blooming across my arms like altars. In Vietnamese stories the snake waits beneath the water to claim whoever dares the bank. I wonder if I was chosen the moment I opened my mouth in those bars, when I leaned into the bike’s curve as if danger could be a swan song. Now I lie awake at hours unnamed, tracing scars that hiss answers back. Something from Vietnam keeps breathing through me, the candle’s heat, the coast’s long nerve, voices braided into salt and night, and I cannot tell if they are echoes or fangs testing the dark. They say snakes shed to grow, but no one warns you how thin the new skin feels, how everything burns against it, how you mistake survival for prophecy. I touch the scar and wonder if I am still that girl clinging to the bike, or if the snake has already swallowed me, patient, sleepless, feeding on my own venom.

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Sep 11, 2025

Sep 11, 2025 at 1:24 PM UTC

Kiernan515

The Year of the Snake

In Đà Nẵng my friends cradled me like a child. We screamed Taylor bridges, tequila-toasted in bars until the lights blurred. A single candle in the bathroom danced warm sighs through open windows, and all felt calm. I grew new muscles balancing on a motorcycle, sometimes gripping Harry’s jacket, sometimes throwing my weight into the wind. The city flared neon and gasoline in stuttered traffic, but along the coast he drove so fast the vibrations in my chest harmonized. I pictured my bones becoming butterflies if I let go. I had entered the Year of the Dragon on a futon, swayed to half-sleep by a hundred chanting voices from the temple next door. I did not dream of dragons. I only learned to breathe fire. At midnight Bailey stood at an ancestral altar, kumquat branches, apricot blossoms, red envelopes, wine, burning full sticks of incense, and smoking half a pack of Esse Lights. This is how the year turns over safely. Tết is not about faith; it’s about continuity. The Year of the Snake slid in with new bones and old habits. It hissed that suffering could be scripture until letters slithered free from the page and coiled like cold jewelry around my wrist. I didn’t make it for Tết that year no silk áo dài, blood orange, too big for a body that learned shrinking before it learned staying. That was the shedding. Salt water peeling old skin away, songs shouted so loud they drowned the ache, poems that did not start tragic, nights when my body finally kept time with the moon. At home the water did not move. At home the dog’s teeth found my hope. A terrified mouth rerouted rivers through my soft parts. A jewel carved from my nose. Six punctures blooming across my arms like altars. In Vietnamese stories the snake waits beneath the water to claim whoever dares the bank. I wonder if I was chosen the moment I opened my mouth in those bars, when I leaned into the bike’s curve as if danger could be a swan song. Now I lie awake at hours unnamed, tracing scars that hiss answers back. Something from Vietnam keeps breathing through me, the candle’s heat, the coast’s long nerve, voices braided into salt and night, and I cannot tell if they are echoes or fangs testing the dark. They say snakes shed to grow, but no one warns you how thin the new skin feels, how everything burns against it, how you mistake survival for prophecy. I touch the scar and wonder if I am still that girl clinging to the bike, or if the snake has already swallowed me, patient, sleepless, feeding on my own venom.