Katie Tian

The First Derivative and Its Applications on Girlhood

In fifth period calculus I learn that in
the spaces between points, each infinity
is smaller than the last. My teacher
tells me to look for an instantaneous rate
of change—but people like us, we only
know beginnings and endpoints, so I try
and define those instead.

Three weeks ago we drove with the windows
down, highway 465 in someone else’s car,
whipped-meringue wind pooling in our
upturned palms. Warmth billowing
from our throats. We melted bouquets
of cotton candy with spit, sealed all our
sticky secrets in a blue ziploc bag. My plastic
polaroids were copper at the edges, and
I’ve since folded them like quarters
and slotted them into laundry machines
in empty apartments. At dusk we broke
under cover of the kitchen lights
all the porcelain plates on their
shelves. I etched my name
crookedly into the railing.

Today I drive to zero the distance
between points, say a prayer to preserve
stagnancy. Time has forgotten how to
hold my hand, so I won’t believe my teacher
when he says it is possible to evaluate slope
at a singular point, to pinpoint change
in a continuum.

A drunk man under streetlights on the curb
of 7-Eleven calls our names. He gets them
wrong, of course. The half moon’s light
makes dirt-imprints of our footsteps, and I
can no longer know a city called home
or a body that still fits like a body. For the
first time, I gather the frilled hem of
my sundress for safekeeping and listen
to whistles souring the dark. We knot
our tongues into soft pretzels, hold them
until they are raw. Later, the bathroom’s
bright lights wash out my complexion.
I bring an extra container
of shampoo into the shower.

Second semester integration comes quick
as a bullet—means finding the area
bounded by a curve, means infinitely
small slabs and slices pieced together to
resemble something of a whole.

Again my body swells like the flesh
of a pink pomegranate against
my ribcage. Ma scoops oil from a jar and
lathers it on my skin so that I may shine and
soften like a real girl. I’ve learned to
mend myself before I’ve finished
breaking. I want to swallow sunlight
on highways again. I want to unwear
this body. Or to trace its rate of
metamorphosis the way a psychic traces
palm lines. Sometimes, when I am sunken
beneath whorls of bathwater, made all simple
and stainless and lovely: I think
I almost can.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Katie Tian is a sixteen-year-old Chinese-American writer from New York. Her work is published in Frontier Poetry, Polyphony Lit, Rising Phoenix Review and Kissing Dynamite, among others. She has been recognized for her writing by Hollins University, Smith College, the Adelphi Quill Awards and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Apart from writing, she enjoys collecting stuffed animals and consuming obscene amounts of peanut butter straight from the jar.