this is summer

the lady has the rugged streets of my mother’s

hometown and my hometown carved

in her skin. arteries drawn across generations

and people spilling like seas. imprint

the curve of my shoulder to theirs. mouths match

rhythms of inheritance. glow like

manmade moonlight. thick oil slick against

the ridges of my patchwork tongue.

we eat bingsu and i taste shavings of the city

and sand slipping through my shoelaces.

we bury ourselves at haeundae fossilized into

scratch marks. my father prays

hamburgers from the grill burnt just right

with redwhiteandblue.

we plant flags in our backyard and they

whisper to the wind words of

belonging. firework shadows curling

behind us. pulsing sea pulsing salt

in my neck in my crumbling wrists. paper

wrapping my bones. humidity

like my first skin. fingers linked we sink

together into grass we grew. we let

ice cream carve seasons into our throats.

tattoo the sun into my inner thighs.

every year i shed on the last day of may.

my cousin trips on the sidewalk

buried in my pores in the grooves of my

orchid veins i follow. we do not

hold hands. this is summer to me. this

is summer. this is my egg yolk

sun. this is my peeling white paint. this is

my dear halmeoni and grandpa.

this is my two-faced heart. this is summer. what is

this.

bingsu (Korean) – shaved ice

haeundae (Korean) – a beach in the Haeundae district of Busan, South Korea

halmeoni (Korean) – grandma

Jeannie Kim is from Chicago and is currently a college freshman at Princeton University. She loves poetry, reading and writing, and listening to music. She wrote this poem in high school, thinking of her visits to South Korea and her family. Jeannie has been recognized as a gold medalist from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards twice, and her poetry has been published in The WEIGHT Journal, Parallax Online, Body Without Organs, and more.

Created, designed, and run by students in the Creative Writing Department at Idyllwild Arts Academy, Parallax Online champions the high school voice. Parallax Online invites original fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, and screenplays by high school writers worldwide; please see our website for submission guidelines. Idyllwild Arts Academy is an arts boarding high school in Southern California, and accepts students in grades 9-12 from around the world.