Year of the Fire Horse
by Phoebe Wang
Lying prone, under a sheet stretched
like a sigh across my spine, I don’t notice
the aching until it’s gone, my RMT finding
the release in my joints and the synovial fluid
slips like egg whites from a shell. I need to move
from the bed to the kitchen, from the fridge to the stove,
scrambling spinach into yolks, iron into protein,
to meet my daily calorie goals. A blister pack
of progesterone promises to shrink the fibroids,
common among women my age, into the size of blue salt
crystals, and then I will stop leaking. I believe
in cold plunges, and at the Russian bayna I inflict
their benefits upon my calves, then hips, then back,
then my clenched jaw. Outside, it has already toggled
from grey mode into oily dark. Another year is about
to gallop away from me, with my fingers wound
in its long, coarse hair. I have never been tempestuous.
I am the diligent Rooster, talons tenacious as staples.
My ambitions are finite and do not steam with the hot
breath of an animal hammering the earth’s backside.
My feet do not leave the ground except when floating
above the cedar-scented benches of the sauna,
or the tiled lining of the saltwater lane. Even then,
they only flutter and kick with small intentions.
The fog has not lifted, only thinned like sheer pantyhose
taut over the face of the thief hijacking my middays.
At 5pm I’m still paralyzed like a feather wedged in snow.
But I want to get up. To fly. I’m getting up now.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Phoebe Wang is a Toronto author of two collections of poetry, Admission Requirements (McClelland and Stewart, 2017) and Waking Occupations, (McClelland and Stewart, 2022). Her most recent work is Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft and Community (Assembly Press, 2024.) She serves as a mentor in the University of Toronto MA in Creative Writing program and as a Writing Consultant at OCAD University.
Website: www.alittleprint.com