Wordplay with Krys Limin
by Alice Asch ’22
This month at The Words, we’re celebrating the work of Krys Limin ‘22! Krys (she/they) is a Religious Studies Major and Classics Minor from Wrightstown, New Jersey, who has dabbled in the genres of fantasy, romance, horror, young adult, and freestyle poetry. When asked about her areas of interest in writing, she said she is fascinated by “reunions and returns, the horrors of being the horror, the disconnect and intergenerational trauma between immigrants and their American-raised children, and the experience of being a woman in a sexually repressed Christian household.” As for Krys’s inspirations, they are drawn to “the smallest aspects of people’s existence: what they use to hold their keys, the ways they are picky, their pet peeves, the food they eat and why.”
After Macalester, Krys hopes to become a Pharmacy technician while saving up for graduate school, where they intend to study Library Science and ultimately “fulfill the young reader’s dream of becoming a librarian”—with plenty of time for writing on the side, of course.
Enjoy these two poems from Kyrs: “rizal in economy” and “the lord’s stitches”!
rizal in economy
he had an old
leather briefcase,
which he tucked
into the overhead compartment
and a tired grin,
which he offered
as he sat down.
he looked as
i always dreamt him;
as i always saw him
on the peso.
not a year aged;
not a moment gained
since his final
farewell.
where to? he asked
but i think he already
knew
i think he just
wanted to hear
what i’d call it.
the dream, i meant to say.
the land of milk and honey.
instead, i stayed silent.
how to tell a father
that his child
is not good enough?
how to tell a martyr
that he died for
an unloved land,
a country abandoned?
he nodded at my silence.
it was answer enough, maybe.
he said, it is not a crime to seek
greener pastures.
he took my hand
and the ink bled
into my skin as
he wrote and spoke.
i studied with them too.
i learnt freedom from
them and resistance
and how to eat them
from the inside out.
he got off the plane in
japan. i looked at my hand,
his elegant script
(you can’t be american
forever, it said,
come home when
you’re ready.)
and i rode the plane
to salvation.
the lord’s stitches
shepherd jesus like a lamb
sits between my legs as i sleep,
paralyzed as if by bondage.
his fingers are slow, meticulous, steady,
a carpenter’s fingers,
sewing me shut,
tucking in the seams.
the prick of the needle,
the draw of the string,
the tired sigh of Our Lord,
like a hymn, a lullaby, played on
a sleepy organ.
he seals me up, a garden enclosed,
ties up the string and bites the end to keep it neat.
purity is not sorrow, he declares.
i will one day dream of waking,
seizing a seam ripper
slicing the stitches with precise motion.
disrupting
the
hymn.
telling him
you can’t have my body.
you have already taken
everything else.
but for now i sleep,
frozen in amber,
stitched shut like the mouth
of a corpse,
a secret, or a sin.