Poetry: Bulbous

by Angela Chen [12 Dangarembga]

	i.  seed, germinating
At five, they unfurled the cascading curls
fallen down to her thin shoulders, fastened
the ornate bow to her waist, strung bright pearls,
milky-white, to her dresses.

At seven, they thought 
her polymer clay:
ready to be moulded by hands
rough and calloused; the hands that belonged to 
he who gripped the rakes.

She was told to watch the dancing fingers of
her mother: threading yarn through 
needle-eye, sorting kitchen cabinets filled 
with rosemary, thyme, dill and 
paprika.

But at eleven, the laboratory was
her heaven. The clinking of bright glass
tubes, the stir of blue broths
the tongues of purple Bunsen
flames – they entranced
her, held
her captive. But her mother never
meddled with 
this kind 
of stuff.

When she turned twelve, she wished 
to stall womanhood.

	ii.  wilting
She: a fool.

Feet rooted on the raised podium
Flashes of blinding lights
Spirited whistles, hoots and hollers
It was a standing ovation

for 

   her?

She stood
with her high school diploma clutched in her
left hand, Science Excellence
Award in her right, and searched the masses
for the warmth, the pride that 
should be
splayed across their faces but

The only thing she saw 
was the white of her protruding knuckles
As a cyclone in her head 
swirled raged sputtered furiously 
And, like a broken record, those words 
were replayed again
and again;

Your hips have
bulged, chest
risen. 
Scorn sneers shrieks slaughter
Voices ringing deep and
raspy
You? Hands made
for scrubbing 
	floorboards
The kitchen is your 
	home, laboratory not
You are not

one of 
Us.

But in that moment, clutching her diploma and her
Science Award
the walls in her mind, made of 
unbendable glass,
shattered.

Turned eighteen, she
turned her back. 

	iii. revival
Nineteen and lost
and swaying and fraying
Desperately yearning for an anchor, like how a
closed canna flower would desperately yearn 
for water;

She: even without his presence,
diminished.

But she, grit building with a battle cry
reached for and sought, then grasped at and fought
      searched for; found comrades, risen-chested or not
	and proved that she, though voice high and light, though
	hips wide and hair longer, was 

Worthy.

Ledge; grasped 
anchor; in place

It was no longer ‘you’ and 
‘Us’
It was ‘we’.

	iv.  bloomed
Her fingers not only
	lather soap onto after-dinner plates	
	weave silk ribbons into her children’s plaits
	tend to the blossoms at the garden gates

Her fingers also
	clitter-clatter across computer keys
	grip HB pencils in scribble-spanned seas
	draw out her work in studying disease

Feet planted once again on the
raised
	podium. 
A cure for Alzheimer’s, audience 
amazed.
Yet mellowed, now thirty, she remained unfazed and undazed
while the air crackled
with a sea of vibrations

It was a standing ovation.