Broken Infinities: Melanie Joy Lin
- Feb 2, 2015
- 1 min read
by katherine du, editorial intern
I.
7.6 pounds, no calculator buttons for teeth.
(skin pale, fake snow on ski slopes)
II.
Grandma painted the times tables in her head.
She squinted and recited for 50 days.
Five years later: Genius anymore?
(almond-eyed, beautiful)
III.
Why does your cah-mah-rah have food in it?
It looks pretty, Melanie.
(no digital pantries to safeguard a bad harvest)
IV.
Melanie’s never seen a boy who looks like her
in the headlines: part Lin, part insanity.
(that’s the only way they could chalk it up)
V.
Bruises sugarcoating nails steal her sleep.
She’s not supposed to talk about them
because that would mean they hurt.
(fingers ache, not fly)
VI.
Her teacher called her Soo Min today.
Melanie kept her hair long after that, after Soo
Min got sick and didn’t have any for herself
(it was naturally curly and red, like spaghetti)
VII.
Sweat on ivory and fine-grained wood
nobody will see in seven years, when she’s
ended her first decade on the stage
where Carnegie wept.
(tears many more shades than yellow)
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