I do not remember how it feels to be twelve,
but most of the time it’s all I can think about.
Sometimes I think you’ll rise up from the grave,
Sometimes I can not believe that you’re dead,
I have always found desperation beautiful,
And maybe this is all a baptism,
But I wish they’d have told me it hurts so damn bad.
You were eleven when you told me that you wanted to die,
And I was twelve when I told you to get on with it.
I don’t think either of us knew what we were talking about,
And I’m still trying to decipher what that means.
You show up in my dreams, and I wake up with
images duplicating and decaying
in the hollow confines of skeletal skull tissue.
When I convinced you to skip church, you told me how
you were so scared of going to hell.
If they’re right, that means you’re there now,
And maybe that’s why I can’t get myself to believe.
Last night I fantasized about slitting my throat.
I watched the blood trickle down my neck,
And chisel through the floor like acid.
Jamie Kim lives in NJ and enjoys writing short stories and poetry. She has won a national gold key for poetry from Scholastics Arts & Writing, and her work is published or forthcoming in Blue Daisies’s Whilst Issue I, Appelley Publishing’s Rising Stars Collection, and Cloudy Magazine. She loves writing––especially at Barnes & Nobles––and spends the rest of her time reading beside her dog.