It lives in my bedroom’s nest of drywall.
In my headphones, flowering through Nirvana.

Even in sleep, I hear it: the unforgiving slap
of my mother’s slippers striking the kitchen tile.

Her gentle voice was no match—syrup-thick, too gentle for each
crack of lightning. An artificial incantation. It makes me

want to tear the book splayed spine-open on my desk, fling
its fluttering vertebrae. I don’t. I hold my breath,

my only remaining possession. It is. It isn’t
a feeling but a habit: biting my nails until the world is silent—

every noise shrinking, disappearing beneath my cuticles.
Throughout my childhood, my parents’ bickering never dissolved

into the sky I always hoped to see. It circled
the dinner table, the hallway, lived in the mirrors. My heartbeat

outran the ticking second hand each morning, each threat
of night: splitting vases, shrieking doors, my body preparing

to run before my mind does. But I stay. From the raindrops
beading Beijing into a needle slipping like thread into my skin.

It doesn’t hurt anymore, too sharp to process
all I hear. The slap-slap-slap of breath, of panting as I run.

The gentle tug of a pulsing hangnail hanging on against the world.
Somewhere, a derailed train crashes through a future I’ve

muted on purpose. I shriek. I don’t. The noise
folds itself under my skin, waiting to flower.

Chenyue Wang is from Beijing, China, currently a high school student in Connecticut. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Trampoline and Pictura Journal.