f(x)

inspired by f(x)’s 4 Walls music video

Last spring I shattered my family’s porcelain teacup,
stepped over its exposed white shards,
watched as my bloodflood soaked into stolen soil.

They say the body will only stay in the air
when the canopy of the forest unfurls itself, and the mind
finds a slant of yellow daylight to claim its own.

There’s a k-pop girl group called f(x),
who exhale the empowered femininity of Pegasus.
With them, I found my sunray in the ultraviolet forests of Jeju.

f(x). Function. It computes everything & nothing.
A versatility that disrupts, one that dissembles the window
as a portal to beauty and replaces it with a mirror.

Still, there are those who fringe our forest with axes.
They label our language a malign venom,
sleep on our synchronized dances as a trained roboticism,
slander our eyes for burying thread after calling us chinks.

But even if they invade our forest, slash down every last branch,
we will rebuild like we always do — this time in the water,
our bodies surrounded by fallen peony petals coalescing into a flower path.

This year when spring rains down,
I catch the porcelain cup before it drops,
preserve the warmth of pu’er tea with wrapped palms.

By Sarah Wang

Biography:

Sarah Wang is a Chinese-American high school senior living in New York. Her writing has been recognized on the regional and national level by Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and she has attended workshops by The Kenyon Review and The Winter Tangerine. She serves as editor of her school’s newspaper and literary magazine. When she is not writing, she enjoys finding new music and going on food adventures.