Crown for the Girl Inside
       

1.

My therapist asks how my writing life
is going. I don't tell her I swooned over
her online video where she defines

disenfranchised grief. "Where are the tissues?"
I ask, sinking into the crackly leather
couch with no back support. "I'm not crying,

I'm sick," I tell her. I haven't written the letter
she assigned me for homework due two sessions
ago. I think of the purple background of her

video like a JCPenney portrait studio. My foot
pulses from bad shoes. I'm supposed to burn
the letter or rip it in tiny shreds to release

my grief. "I have entered my grief and cannot
come out," I hear myself say to her too.

2.

"Come out," I hear myself say on YouTube,
pointing to a blackboard with chalk on my ass.
I've written grief in all caps and bolded letters.

"No one has died," I clarify and struggle to lift
myself from the couch. I trace the word
with a chalky finger. My therapist enters

the studio wearing a cap and gown
like for a senior photo. "What do you write
about?" she asks as she pulls down a galaxy-

print wallpaper like a projector map. "Show me
a poem," she says. Her tassel trembles. I smudge
the couch. From my bag I unfold a sheet

of paper, hold her finger over the soft spot of
the poem where the speaker's grief cannot surface.

3.

"The poem says the speaker's grief cannot surface,"
I tell my therapist. The poem has told me
a girl uncrumples herself like a sheet of paper,

feels the heat of an iron, fears looking like
the broken face of her mother, a vase lined
with Gorilla Glue. The poem once said readers

will question you. The poem said I'll have to
warm my own heart, no one else will do it.
The poem said "glue," "iron," "heart," "sheet,"

as if I'd know what that meant. I placed a riddle
into the poem: a riddle with no answer.
I placed grief into the poem: a girl sealed inside.

My therapist says, "Poet, you mean, not poem—"
holding my poem at eye level— "Look."

4.

Holding my poem at eye level, I look
for evidence of policing myself. I return
to the scene of grief with a flashlight. Halloween

to mid-December. A girl, an e-mail, a string
of e-mails. A compliment, a question, an accusation.
A numbered list of accusations. A Twitter

mob. A house with a blinking phone. A blinking
phone in my head. I hear my breathing
beyond the walls. I want my therapist to narrate

the scene with her godlike voice. I want to
wallpaper over the girl in the scene and hide
her. I have been writing the vaguest version

of this story in order to preserve her. I hold
the girl's hand and mime a lock on her mouth.

5.

The girl mimes a lock on her mouth,
a thrown-away key. The girl regrets showing
you the inside of her house. The girl's address

can be found on whitepages.com.
In my silence, I hear her peeling wallpaper
from her nails. In my silence, I hear readers

comment on her race, her past. I watch
her eyes twitch in the middle of the night
as she counts her losses: this, that, the story

she can't refine at parties into the gleaming
version of the event. But she knows,
in the retelling, she could become the face

of the story and nothing else. She knows
someone like her can only have one story.

6.

Someone like me can only have one story:
Asian and female, I must grieve
perfectly. I google "how to grieve if you aren't

white." I take selfies of my face in mourning,
I get a drastic haircut as if I've been broken up
with, I'm obsessed with skin care, I wear

a sheet mask nightly. Self-care: a bathtub full
of white women's tears. Despite the grout stains
that won't come out. I must be content

leaving dead skin cells in the water and nothing
more. This revenge requires a tremendous
imagination, but nothing my foremothers

haven't already done. I put my head down.
I imagine. I write a bigger and better poem.

7.

Imagine me writing bigger and better poems.
I'll have moved on, or time will have. I've finally
written a letter to my enemy asking for

a public apology she'll never give. I'm going
to my therapist's office for a letter-burning
ceremony. The ceremony will start

with a match and end with a slice of cake
and a blown-out wish. I want the authority
of a white person, I'll think, like a prayer,

with doubt and my eyes closed. I'll realize
each better poem is a piece of grief—made
from it. I'll open a window and sweep

the dregs of burnt paper into my hand.
My therapist will ask about my writing.

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Copyright © 2022 Lisa Low All rights reserved
from The Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission