I. Creation

My brother shot out of my mother’s belly like a bullet
When he came out, he was blue

A bloody umbilical cord 
Wrapped around his neck like a noose

Doctors’ masks stained like water dripped on parchment
Eyes swollen like peaches 

My mother held her breath, counting,
A baby’s home, a soft pipe, could be the thing that deadens him

I was waiting outside with my grandmother, 
She held my small brown hands in her veined ones

Webbed fingers wrapping paper wrist
Like a fish caught in knotted nets

There was a pulse in that cool air,
Maybe, a new heartbeat

Maybe, the plum seed I swallowed last week,
Or, a pregnant whale lost somewhere at sea

The beating was hidden
Tucked away and thumping 

Not in the way that stars do when they are about to burst,
But in the way people do when they think about a life outside of themselves

In a different solar system,
Or simply a different hospital room,

Both ways,
A rhythmic constant

In my culture, we worship birth,
We give breath to it, cultivate it and care for it like a harvest moon

Or, like a boy
My brother was born in July, which makes him a Cancer

He was born,
It’s what makes him special

II. Cusp

I tell my brother “your body of scales 
Will never be weighed or worn down.”

He nods, shovels trains,
Scoops them off broken toy tracks

Zooms them into the walls, dead ended
I assume the passengers died

He disagrees incorrectly,
But what do you know when you’re four?

Not that you shouldn’t look down on a cliff
Keeping your stance wide and chest up

You might fall
And keep falling 

Not that you should close your eyes if you're dizzy 
This is all to prevent you from falling- I tell him

I’ve always hated the tire swing
It makes me seasick 

He hated the boat ride we went on three years ago
When he threw up into the ocean

And saw the fin of something below 
The blue foaming ripples

This was all before 
We didn't speak anymore, before

Our distance was further than that liminal space
Between a mouth and the words spilling out 

Between a drop of dew hanging on succulent leaf
And the brief moment before it shatters onto the soil

III. Closing

My brother doesn't wake up every morning
And wish we were still in touch

Wish that somewhere beneath the surface, he will see the belly of a whale
And, inside, a beating heart and a baby

One, maybe even two, bloody and crusted,
Buried in the crevice of a memory he wished he had forgotten

If my brother sees the sea dried out will he remember
That we used to wait by the windowsill

For that thaw of winter, 
That raw child called spring? 

I was born in March when we parted 
I didn't think a closing was supposed to be soft

Like the exhale of a season, 
Like the “C” of “Descent”

Sometimes when I am between my dreams and wake
I imagine us on the swings

Cheeks reddened into cherry blush
Feet kicking into the air 

Feeling the wind in our throats
Swinging, always in tandem,

Like the fading tick of a clock,
Or, the dying pulse of a plum’s pit

Published October 3rd, 2021

Shreya Khullar is a seventeen-year-old poet from Iowa City, Iowa. Her work is published, or is forthcoming in, The Rising Phoenix Press, Polyphony Lit, and more. She currently serves as the Iowa Student Poet Ambassador for the 2021-2022 school year. Shreya has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and hopes to write a novel in the future.

Korean-born artist Jae Ko grew up in Tokyo, and she is now based in Washington, D.C. Ko attended Tokyo Art School, received a BFA from Wako University in Tokyo, and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Ko has held solo exhibitions all over the world, including the Beijing Times Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chengdu, Powerlong Art Museum in Shanghai, Galerie Roger Katwijk in Amsterdam, Galerie Bernd A. Lausberg in Düsseldorf, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, Marsha Mateyka Gallery in Washington D.C., and Heather Gaudio Fine Art in Connecticut. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Grounds for Sculpture, The Phillips Collection, and the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden are among the permanent collections that hold Ko’s work. More of Ko's work can be found on her website, and through Heather Gaudio Fine Art.