This Is My Body and Blood by Joni Cruz (14, Philippines)*

[content warning: self harm, blood]

and the Lord said 
i want to bleed out at the 
corner store. deathly pallor under 
faulty fluorescents 
He consummates this affinity 
she has for disposable razors — 
they’re wedded now, as though 
a shock of weeping red gashes 
renders them any less mismated: 

---

she belongs to the idyll of the bees and Eve 
where the hard glance 
of safety blades is esoteric only to 
five o’clock shadows and salarymen 

the third day sees her knees scabby and 
skinny wrists quartering band-aids; 
bruises and other divine existences shall rise today — 

the Lord said let there be light; 
let there artless housewives with penciled, porcine brows; 
let there be young men with copybook ambitions 
that rear premature children who know only 
pacemaking and plagiarism and the croon of 
fresh wounds and foundation and other forms of salvation; 
let there be catharsis in the passing of these piggish women and prosaic men
and premature children 
and do all this 
in memory of me.