prayer to mazu in mistranslation
By Julie Wong
childless mother, please forgive me.
i’m trying to follow in your foot-
steps, but i’ve never been good at holding
my breath. too shallow-lunged, salt
pearling my face into fish scale, horse-
shoe crabs bleeding blue and dry.
to the pearly conch of my ear, the end
of the question1 sounds the same
as mother2: you, the woman3 made
mouth4, your silence birthing family
on the back of the horse5, and i want to be
birthed into an end i can believe in,
my mouth made anew: no longer the conch,
instead the air bleeding through it,
my weight lifted from my family’s back
by act of love: swimming6 sounded
into usefulness7, the drowning a return
to the first home, the first carrying
and every carrying since. let me forget
the words for no, the breath salting
my lungs dry. teach me how to be silent.
Julie Wong (she/her) is an undergraduate student at UCLA. She writes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. She was a poetry finalist in the 2024 Rising Voices Awards, and her work is published or forthcoming in ellipsis… literature and art, Full House Literary, Ink & Marrow, and elsewhere.
Artwork Source: “hand over water,” by Juan Gomez. Free use image.
The Turning Leaf Journal 