“In July, bamboo blades rustled against
paper cranes and prayer strips; I wondered how
I’d made the cut, when I wasn’t a boy
my father wanted, wasn’t a koi princess
my mother said would magically turn
her tail into a pair of legs.
I looked for the fabled rabbits on the moon,
a family of them taking turns
to pound rice into pearly cakes
along their dark, elliptical orbit.”
-from “Girl Insomniac,” Miho Nonaka
Coffee Girl 