‘Changeling’
— Joyce Chong
It’s important that I mention, I truly wanted to be beautiful
for her. In my dreams I am thin & if not thin, something better.
This beautifully sad poem moves between past and present, memories illuminating a single moment in time into something more conflicted. Trauma moves in cycles, becomes a part of us the more we circle around it. Hieu’s writing is quietly rhythmic, retracing footsteps through past pains with unembellished language. Its images sit sharp in your mind, the fear and the loathing of your own body, the desire to unhook it from yourself to replace it with something else. How we can turn against our selves, how love makes our fears a double-edged blade. And how, through this all, the past is reluctant to leave. It sticks to you like a burr, forgets its way to the door.