Matinee

My mother cowers on our tattered couch
her long black hair a stage curtain

My father looms, disco mustache,
pompous pointed collar. His voice knifes

her. Words so well-honed.
I am three years old, standing off stage

in Wonder Woman Underoos.
I taste my father’s resentment,

its oily slick across my baby teeth,
but my mother’s helplessness

melting cold and wet in my palm
prompts me to leave my post.

I step on stage, hold out a tissue
to dab my mother’s cheek. My eyes widen–

Surprising sting of her slap. Together
we watch tissues flutter recklessly

between us. My mother whimpers
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

What else can she say?
Only the lines she was given.

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Zia Wang is Indian-American and part of the third generation of her family from East Africa. She completed her undergraduate degree in English at Princeton University and her medical degree at NYU. Her poetry has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, MORIA, and Wilderness House Literary Review and was selected as second-runner-up in the New Orleans Review Poetry Contest 2023. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.