serenade with burning city

Kayleigh Sim
for you.

imagine: we are nocturnal and you tell me that you want to know how 
light looks like. i show you this city, neon signs flickering inside out & 

back again & you tell me that you are in love with the stars. remember: 
we gazed at the same sky once. imagine: midnight & we fill an empty 

balcony, let our eyes follow the moon. i trace streetlights like constellations 
& tell you that this city is beautiful at night. you smile. like us. you ask me 

to make a wish & i wish that i’ll never leave this city. that even in the time 
of butterflies, we could pretend that we are beautiful. last summer we gazed

at the last of butterflies before migration & you decided that you wanted
volition, escapism. to taste the sun & swallow first light like a diurnal

being. i told you that we are not one of them, that daylight would ravage
us whole. now: to you, a lifetime later: do you remember? the moon is full, 

tonight. in every lifetime i’ve fallen for a boy who carves out his heart for 
a butterfly, for a city that has fallen in love with a more beautiful version 

of ourselves. below: neon lights flicker into everything & nothing. this city 
is artificial light set ablaze. i always find myself here, waiting for nightfall,

for you to return & yet i promise myself that i would one day fold my moth 
wings into a firefly & fluoresce, just for you. someday, we’ll meet again.

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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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