I think I’m naked and everyone is looking
I think I’m naked and everyone is looking.
Legs, two parentheses that never quite close
Thighs, a bakery window I press my face against
Posture, a small bridge sagging under rush hour
I am a public landmark with no entry fee.
Their eyes arrive before I do
Their looking is a climate I must dress for.
Their gaze pervades,
penetrates,
smothers,
like a heavy quilt in summer.
I think I’m naked and everyone is looking,
and I join them.
I wonder if my curves behave under her duvet,
if the sheet makes a better sculptor than I do.
Even in love I check the angles,
stage-manage shadows,
audition for the part of myself.
To open my body like a window
is to invite the surveyor.
I learn the architecture of smallness
how to fold a woman into carry-on.
An enclosed space as alibi
bathroom stall, sweater sleeve, inside voice.
I keep a key under the tongue
in case of sudden invasion.
I think I’m naked so I cover up with make-up.
I clock in at the mirror, unpaid shift.
Today’s face: compliant, water-resistant.
I paint the same portrait with minor variations,
the museum of acceptable morning.
Blend, blur, behave:
a swipe card that opens doors I paid to build.
If I don’t wear it, I become the sign that says
closed for maintenance.
I think I’m naked but I’m required to feel more naked
Every surface recruits me
plucked, waxed, buffered to infant sheen,
as if thought leaves wrinkles
and wisdom is a workplace hazard.
I am required to appear inexperienced
with expert consistency.
I practice absence until it shows.
I think I’m naked and everyone is looking.
I think I’m employed by their looking.
I clock out and still hear the scanner beep.
What am I without being looked at?
Tonight I undress without an audience,
let the mirror be a dark lake.
I enter it like a verb.
If there’s a gaze, it’s mine
not the border guard, the cartographer.
I name the parts as if discovering land,
refuse the old map’s margin notes:
here be monsters, here be shame.
I think I’m naked and everyone is looking.
I blink. The room blinks back.
For a moment, we both forget our jobs.
The milking
What a brutal milking
Motherhood and wifehood.
She’s told to strain the curds of self.
They call it marriage, we call it a turnstile of vows
She goes in as a person, she comes out as a pantry,
stocked with hours, soft with yes,
her exit fee accruing interest in his pockets.
Consider the arithmetic of dependency:
she’s trained to keep still,
to match her pulse to someone else’s schedule.
The summons comes from crib, office, mortgage, calendar,
and the workplace imagines a wife at home,
so she is imagined into home.
Her hours are elastic and sticky.
The bell rings at 2 a.m., 4 a.m., forever o’clock.
If she does less, the relationship goes sour.
He waves, she sweeps.
Even when she clocks in, she also clocks under
Two timesheets stapled through the same hand,
forty-three paid, twenty-eight unpaid,
and still the audit says insufficient.
The house runs on her apology, calibrated by fear.
Behold the nondecision that binds
They never assigned it, it just adhered to her.
The doing decided her.
Exit is luxury
priced, delayed, and charged
to the one who kept the lights on.
Call it what it is
labour
reproductive, exploited, routine as breathing.
Extraction doesn’t stop at the factory gate,
it puts on slippers and asks what’s for dinner.
His career proofs nicely in a warm room
she keeps at temperature with her spine.
The wage is sexed in advance,
the better jobs fenced before she arrives.
Still, there’s a room she keeps that resists pasteurization,
a homeplace where the milk sours into culture.
Bring your drudge hours, your night feedings,
your jokes that smell like disobedience.
We’ll butter the strike, skim a horizon,
honour every household form and un-form,
and teach the calf and the comrade to say:
the milking is over when the cow says so.
Châu Ma is a Master’s student in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. Born and raised in Hanoi, she moved to Wellington in early 2025 and quickly fell in love with the city and its people. She began writing poetry recently, inspired by friends who write.