In This Family All Parts Are Private Parts | Natalie Wang | Poetry Contest 1st Place Winner - Spring 2025

the first time i saw my parents

holding hands, i was twenty-three.

twenty-three years of bare bone arms

wishing for flesh to be buried in, of fleeing

from hugs from giggling pinafored schoolmates,

of family photos where we stand so far apart

you could line up all the bones and organs

in the human body and still not cover

the spaces between us, twenty-three years of

nights spent watching them fight

in fluorescent-lit kitchens, so i could grow up

blaming that childhood lack and say

i never learnt to be gentle, then to suddenly

see well-worn fingers twining like lovers

tender as newborn skin;

my breath left itself in my throat               and forgot

to make its way

out.

---

Natalie Wang writes about cats, ghosts, and womanhood, and maintains that they are all the same thing. She has been published in Fairy Tale Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Corvid Queen, Trampoline Journal, The Kindling, LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, various editions of the SingPoWriMo anthology and My Lot Is A Sky, an anthology of poetry by Asian women. Her poetry collection The Woman Who Turned Into A Vending Machine is a book on metamorphosis and myth. You can find her at www.nataliewang.me.