perhappened
  • the mag
    • the issues
    • submit to the mag
  • the press
    • the chapbooks >
      • CALIFORNIA IS GOING TO HELL
      • body in motion
      • sun of daedalus / song of anticlea
    • submit to the press
  • support us
perhappened mag
issue 8: LOVERS

butterfly

JESSICA KIM
                 with lines by BTS
 
               According to Chaos Theory, you 
alone can change my future. Naive 
               enough to believe this, I press 
 
your lips on the cityscape of mine. 
               I dream of flight. Isn’t it fascinating, 
the way you don’t have to worry 
 
               about earthly desires? You are shining 
in this pitch-black darkness and the light 
               caresses me. Like the butterfly effect, 
 
your heartbeat alone can move every
               constellation in my eyes. Our fingers 
star-crossed, resistant to the violence 
 
               of reality. I’m scared of losing you. 
I can already sense their desire for 
               escapism. Will you stay by my side? 
 
Will you promise me not to fly 
               away? Look at how our romance 
is intimately configured. But you
 
               mistake complexity for randomness. 
My heart is still shattering on you. Your 
               wings ready to unfurl. Like a butterfly, 
 
take flight. My wings, fractured. I flap 
               the ruffles of my slipdress in desperation,
taking me to the outskirts of the city. 
 
               Stay, don’t go to those woods. I’m hoping 
that this too, is just part of the pattern.
               I want to be loved by your fleeting smallness.

Jessica Kim is a disabled poet. A two-time 2021 Pushcart nominee, her work appears or is forthcoming in Wildness Journal, Diode Poetry Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, Grain Magazine, Longleaf Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and more. She is the founding editor of The Lumiere Review. Find her at jessicakimwrites.weebly.com and @jessiicable.
perhappened mag
← back    issue 8: LOVERS    next →
header photo: michele bergami (unsplash)

© 2020-22 perhappened LLC
  • the mag
    • the issues
    • submit to the mag
  • the press
    • the chapbooks >
      • CALIFORNIA IS GOING TO HELL
      • body in motion
      • sun of daedalus / song of anticlea
    • submit to the press
  • support us