From Holes We Emerged, and Into Holes We Shall Return by Ally Ang

From Holes We Emerged, and Into Holes We Shall Return
Ally Ang

I put my fingers inside the moon
like a mouth, to see how wide
I can spread it open. Sex is just a series
of tubes, a friend told me once.
Is a tube an inside out hole,
or two holes holding hands?

My love and I perched
on opposite ends of the couch,
toes interlaced. Have you ever
craved someone so desperately,
you wished God would rend
a new hole in you, just
to fit their perfect hands
into a place no one else

has touched? Three decades ago,
the doctors sliced a hole
into my mother and yanked
me out, silent and still,
while she floated somewhere
above the pain, a curtain
bisecting her body. The first
of many violences
I didn’t mean to inflict,
but did anyway. I’ve never
asked to see the scar.

I used to pay strangers
to puncture holes in me
and fill them with metal—
eyebrow, nipples, septum—
obsessed with adornment,
the breakage of skin. I thought
that if I asked for pain,
nothing could hurt me. Eventually,
the rings fell out and the body
refleshed, impenetrable
once again. Some holes

are ephemeral; others, I will take
to the grave. Sinkhole, peephole,
manhole, k-hole, asshole,
blowhole, gloryhole, God-shaped
hole in my heart. I’m no longer looking

to fill or be filled. Let me stay
holy as the world moves through me.
It’s not the hole that empties me.
It’s the rupture I crave.