“Lead Us Not Into Temptation” by Isabella Jia Dunsby (16, South Korea)

“cheers”
is it the tinkle of
bottle meets giddiness

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or the clinking of my bones
because i’m cold. is it
the stories of drunken delicious biting in neon-litten nightclubs, sneaking
past docile non-id’ers because
christ, we were only ten six years ago. mindlessness or
conscious coming of age, which is
it the pheromone of {im}maturity seeping down perspiring foreheads, chemoreceptive
moths grinding to the bass
notes of young dumb and broke -
because in the silence between
your first clink behind the corner store
and
everything that follows,
what are you waiting for?