to seven-year-old me

i hope that there can come a time 
where you can forgive me 
for all i have done 
to leave you behind 
because 
you weren't stupid, you know? 
and people might have hated you 
but you were happier 
than i ever could have been 
and you were braver 
and kinder 
and better, perhaps, 
in ways i've forgotten 
i could be 
and i remember you 
as a girl who was gentle with her brother 
who named the lizards hiding in her walls 
who loved hanging upside-down from the monkey bars 
unabashedly proud of things i'd be ashamed of 
and yes, you were selfish, and yes, you could sometimes 
be cruel 
and you didn't understand why people were so 
complicated 
but neither do i. 

i'm glad i was you. 
despite everything, 
i'm glad to have been 
me. 

yejunee

FL

18 years old

More by yejunee

  • ouroborous

    the snake is hungry 

    so the snake will eat 

    and eat it does, chewing, gnawing, 

    and will you ever notice, little thing, 

    that it is your own tail 

    you are swallowing? 

     

  • abalone

    from salt and foam and scales 

    steal the hearts of stone 

    nacreous shells, dying husks, 

    the honey-sweet flesh that once 

    clung to its bones 

    to die of thirst. 

  • eschatology

    meet me at the end of the world 

    the space between firestorms and tsunamis 

    across the acid oceans 

    and here, where the rot 

    has begun to reclaim the cities at last.