heart by Kay Lee (15, South Korea)*

[Content warning: allusions to suicide/self-harm]

​you fall from the stars with your soul light as soot and your mind heavy as a black hole. / your heart wanders into exploding galaxies / inky nothingness. / you lose yourself in the tangled remains of your ribcage, / twisting in on itself, stabbing at your lungs. / you look at me with blood smeared across your cheeks and constellations winding themselves over your skin; / my heart aches with inexplicable pain at the embers that howl in your eyes. / ​

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(for constellations, beautiful as they may seem, are etched with stories of a breaking solitude; / myths long past; / souls stretched ragged with grief-) / (for grief is a funeral pyre that tip-toes quietly inside of you, / carefully sets your lungs aside and rearranges your ribs; / makes room for itself and burns everything away in incendiary; / never leaves. / haunts ghosts in devastated souls.) /

​you drift with it- / i can taste it, the pulsating blackness- / whenever you look at me with crinkled eyes and the wind blows your sorrow to my lips. / you hold white stars in your hands / flames in your gut / and i can do nothing but grip your luminous fingertips with my own and let my desperation seep through the cracks. ​

/ for my dear, i wish to withstand the pull of time with you. / let me lead your twisted soul through the mountains, / let me fill your morose ribs with kintsugi gold; / rebuild something better than what once was. / stay with me in this wretched life, even as my heart aches from it all, / and let us fall through the earth together. 

/ “must you save me?” / this you ask me / one day, red criss-crossing your wrists. / the moon bleeds, the heavens quiet.

/ “yes,” / i tell you, because my soul, too, twists with stars. because my heart is a weak, weak thing. 

/ “i must.”