revolution

Kayleigh Sim

“my soul is an empty carousel at sunset.” ~pablo neruda

ghost town at half light & we wait for the moon to engulf us whole. 
we wander the streets of this city, i watch how you unearth flowers 
from the dust, shred them to ribbons with your earth-filled nails. how 
a butterfly lands on your fingertips & you mangle its wing into our 
undoings, like i once did. remember, we were ethereal once. eleven 
summers ago we imagined that when we die, we would reincarnate 
into planets. that we would worship the sun like divine beings, bodies 
in motion, for light years. here, on this carousel, calliope music hums 
only for ghosts to listen. i decide that this city will be hollow nostalgia, 
empty carousels for eternity. we flake our palms against cold metal, 
orbiting nothing. we’ve done this too many times & i know that when 
night falls, you’ll step out of our revolution, leaving me in eternal orbit 
& still: i like to tell myself that you loved me once. that if there is a next 
life, i would fall in love with you all over again. but for one more time: 
tell me about revolution, how to step off carousels & leave an earth-born 
soul behind. & for memory: i stitch your flower ribbons into everything 
we once were, fold your mangled wings into our metamorphosis. to you: 
imagine that even we were beautiful once. & to time: turn for me.

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Kayleigh Sim is a Southeast Asian writer living in San Diego, California, and is currently an Executive Editor for Polyphony Lit. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Interstellar Lit, Aster Lit, The Global Youth Review, The Augment Review, Pollux Journal, The B’K, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @kayleighsim_

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