Jeannie Kim (17)
you were never a bad person
“feed me your unhappiness, and i will craft it
into the finest wine—and like kings, we will live:
gilded royalty, with stomachs for souls.”
and i watched you bare your teeth for the audience,
mouth snarling and spitting and smiling—they knew you were beautiful,
sank teeth into your soft flesh like piercing melons, juice ripe and still
no signs of seeds. we paraded around the city streets
and they would greet us in the sunlight, cleave our footprints with hunger
in search of meat past the golden hour of the afternoon—
how i wish i could tell them there is nothing past these lines we drew
on our faces. and i would paint in watercolor across your collarbones,
the same palette we used for twelve years. and they would look
down our shirts and leave bruises stacked dominoes. how we would cry
foreheads to the windowpanes, how i would cry when i saw the marks
beneath your jaw. how we would dance and kiss and entangle afterwards.
i found you once, exquisite face reflected in glass and hands stapled
to the sink, and you told me you were never a bad person.
like a good person, you would line your lips in nude and climb
to the top of the stairs, heels like splinters of wood. and yet—
one by one you asked your friends to line up to say goodbye, as if
they had not tried to swallow your screams with theirs every time.
after, they said you were like a rooftop without a house underneath:
that they could see you crumbling, it was only a matter of time.
i have yet to imagine you as anything but a mansion, or a lovely
cottage by the sea. i cannot say that i saw it coming, because art
is supposed to last forever, entwined folds of immortality, scaffolding.
a sculpture, engraved in the ground: alabaster cheeks melted
to floorboard, gums pulled taut to encase a love letter
clenched between teeth, shatters like liquid nitrogen memories. it burns
the look in your eyes when you did not cry into lines on my wrist.
we are twenty-five now—i will meet you again, when we are twenty-five, unscathed.
Jeannie Kim is a high school senior from Chicago with a love for poetry, reading, and music. She is a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards gold medalist and has been a part of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and Kenyon Review Young Writers. She is also an executive editor at Polyphony Lit and enjoys discovering new writing.
you were never a bad person
“feed me your unhappiness, and i will craft it
into the finest wine—and like kings, we will live:
gilded royalty, with stomachs for souls.”
and i watched you bare your teeth for the audience,
mouth snarling and spitting and smiling—they knew you were beautiful,
sank teeth into your soft flesh like piercing melons, juice ripe and still
no signs of seeds. we paraded around the city streets
and they would greet us in the sunlight, cleave our footprints with hunger
in search of meat past the golden hour of the afternoon—
how i wish i could tell them there is nothing past these lines we drew
on our faces. and i would paint in watercolor across your collarbones,
the same palette we used for twelve years. and they would look
down our shirts and leave bruises stacked dominoes. how we would cry
foreheads to the windowpanes, how i would cry when i saw the marks
beneath your jaw. how we would dance and kiss and entangle afterwards.
i found you once, exquisite face reflected in glass and hands stapled
to the sink, and you told me you were never a bad person.
like a good person, you would line your lips in nude and climb
to the top of the stairs, heels like splinters of wood. and yet—
one by one you asked your friends to line up to say goodbye, as if
they had not tried to swallow your screams with theirs every time.
after, they said you were like a rooftop without a house underneath:
that they could see you crumbling, it was only a matter of time.
i have yet to imagine you as anything but a mansion, or a lovely
cottage by the sea. i cannot say that i saw it coming, because art
is supposed to last forever, entwined folds of immortality, scaffolding.
a sculpture, engraved in the ground: alabaster cheeks melted
to floorboard, gums pulled taut to encase a love letter
clenched between teeth, shatters like liquid nitrogen memories. it burns
the look in your eyes when you did not cry into lines on my wrist.
we are twenty-five now—i will meet you again, when we are twenty-five, unscathed.
Jeannie Kim is a high school senior from Chicago with a love for poetry, reading, and music. She is a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards gold medalist and has been a part of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and Kenyon Review Young Writers. She is also an executive editor at Polyphony Lit and enjoys discovering new writing.
