Introductions at the Orphanage

Elena Jiang, China

Tell me about your birth lord; your cocoon-shelled nursery and your bandaged arrival. My story is about Jupiter, cerise supergiant extravasating blood-milk, I watched bees fester in redness and my body palpitate. Mind smeared incorporeal, flesh humanized by motherly screams. I wonder when I came to live. Three centimeters of umbilical cord parallel three eclipses of the universe, and we are born in miles of it, wrapped nebulous and choked half-blue, near-stillborns and embodiments of infinite expanse. They did not want us to live. Constancy is circumpolar—Pluto is drowning, the undersides of our silk slippers are patched with stolen diapers, pyres of corpse cauterize our pillowcases at night, smoke baby oil, you wake up the next morning and Pluto is still drowning. I am trying to tell you that people can change. We will teach you how to inhale earth-glow into ribcage, how to calm chimeras and other wild lunacy. How to apply ointment the color of postpartum vomit on your tender umbilical cord stump so it doesn’t hurt—your scarred placenta is beautiful, your body is beautiful. Jupiter, my helium-glazed harbor and host of parasite, died last night; I bore witness. Pregnancy deluged into ocean and somewhere in offing I saw the penumbra of a thousand angels and myself. Let blood bleed. It’s okay, we are all wanderers here. Tell me about your birth lord. (Let your imagination run wild.)

Elena Jiang is a high school junior attending Shanghai American School in China. They are a previously unpublished writer and a student of Kenyon Review Writers Workshop 2021. Their work has been recognized nationally by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. In addition to writing, they enjoy photography, philosophy, and watching sad movies.