Wing Yau

Pei (Skin)

1. 真皮 Genuine Leather

After 15 years
we had to drag the leather
sofa into the night’s
putrid mouth. 15 years of
taking center in our family dramas,
a final ride
over speed bumps, broken glasses,
tyre treads that blackened
our bitumen

until we heard its skin savaged,
its stapled dignity in shreds—
exposed in the crimson downpour
its hardened heart, like convoluted
roadkill still holding on
to the last thread of enmeshment
for final comfort.

2. 腐皮 Rotten skin

We were sitting side by side,
laughing, or were we crying ‘cos it was
a Mel Gibson movie
about Jesus? I leaned
towards the other side—
slowly away
from you as if still in puberty, all lop-sided
in rage and sympathy. You understood
cruelty had an odor. It began from the way
skin ripped open in front of frightened eyes.
In the strobed light you

apologized for the charred
skin where your breast used to be.
I had never seen its color
when it was there. But then again,
I had not known how grief-seared
skin could turn this sour; or
how the smell of my mother’s skin
mixed with stale popcorn
husks can be stuck in eternity
between our seats.

3. 皮毛 Skin and Hair

We’ve come to agree
skin and hair is the lightest
residue from our childhood—
can’t even tell if it’s in the air
or on our lips. So I tell you
how I come home from work &
take off my socks. How skin flakes
fall off and hide in the nearest grout line.
Growing up is so trivial, not much different to
how hair and skin become dust to fill time. They gather
around the house we left behind,
full of liberation.

---

Wing Yau (she/them) was born in Hong Kong and has lived in the United States and Australia. Melbourne is the city in which she now lives, works, and writes. Wing’s writing has appeared in Island Magazine, Voice and Verse, Variety Pack, The Suburban Review, and elsewhere.