From Holes We Emerged, And Into Holes We Shall Return
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. Originally published in Split Lip
Ally Ang is the author of Let the Moon Wobble (Alice James Books 2025). A National Endowment for the Arts fellow and MacDowell fellow, Ally’s work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Seattle Met, and elsewhere. They co-host Other People’s Poems, a poetry open mic and reading series in Seattle.
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