Amelia Yuan

Next to the pool

the sun is tasting me in pieces. I am thinking of how I can baptize myself into a body different
from my mother’s. My skin peeling as the light rays undress themselves in water. I am reminded
of the white lace splitting threads around a clementine, or the cracks making a mosaic out of
desert river beds. If you were to look closer at my forearms, you would find the veins forking
around the pale, grooved place I last tried to carve a message to her. Now I am peeling down to
my shin bone, breaking the grasping of sinew and flesh. The sun pushing my shoulders into
bronze. My skin turning unknowable with craquelure. Begging for a place to return. It is easy to
remember where we started: the same as anybody else, in the dark, known by alabaster-light
fingers. It is easy to all set alight.

Amelia Yuan is a high school senior from the Bay Area. She is an alumna of the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and The Adroit Journal’s Summer Mentorship Program. Her work has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and The New York Times.