​Teen Sequins 2024

Grace Marie Liu, Age 17
Bio: Grace Marie Liu is a Chinese-American poet from Michigan. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Minnesota Review, Sundog Lit, and AAWW, among others. She serves as an Editor-in-Chief for Polyphony Lit and The Dawn Review. 

My Mother Tells Me a Heart is the Same Size as a Fist 
​ ​after Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong

 The day I turned seventeen I threatened to cut off
 all my hair and move to New York City, so my mother

 pistoled her index finger into my
 stomach, saying, Aren’t you tired of being

 this way. I wrapped my hands around her
 choice of weapon, watching

 my anger tiptoe outside my collarbones
 into the frameless mirror behind her. When I was

 three years old I choked on a watermelon
 seed and my mother told me, Swallow

 down. I know because she frames it
 as if this made me rather than tried to kill me.

 My phone number changed and I woke up
 with an ear infection. Pus crusted around my left

 pearl earring like a small, golden mango.
 Wherever I was, the sun kept falling

 as my ear bloomed red, then blue, then purple.
 I used to believe that if I sat down somewhere quiet, I could

 straighten myself out. But here is an empty flower
 pot. Here is a family photo in which everyone is smiling

 and my heart is torn out. Here, a girl unravels
 my pinned-back hair. My fist opens

 in her mouth to cast a dove between her teeth.