Remains of a girl
Emily Cheah
The first thing you should know is that disappearing
is mostly a matter of subtraction.
Begin with your name.
Remove one letter every morning,
until your mother calls you by
accident,
until attendance takes longer than
usual,
until the teacher looks at the empty space
on her sheet and says,
Who is missing?
Feel it pooling warm beneath your tongue.
As girls we’d crease the tips of pink sneakers,
practice molding little toes, curving spines into cranes.
We folded then too,
heartbeats tucked between knees,
promised glittery cheeks were born from sleep.
Tomorrow, mom will tie my hair up in pigtails and buy me a new uniform, the navy one with red plaid.
I’ll find a loose string,
worry it between fingerprints
and ask the girl with the green skirt,
if she’ll hold the other end,
ribs flashing
through apertures.