For You, After We’ve Parted by Heeseo Lee (South Korea)

After Frank O’Hara
​
You do not always know what I am feeling.
It was ten years ago I buried my heart 
in the sand by the sea where the tides
could not reach. But just last night
you asked me 
if you could touch, and so
I retrieved it, and let you hold it,
a 
            writhing and 
shrieking fruit,

​  and isn’t it odd? For when I am full 
on the thoughts that weep, it is want
for you that blazes it to tinder. Put out your hand,
isn’t it
            light, with emptiness? Grainy with sand, 
by the sea? And someone you love goes away,
to the scent of pine and says won’t

                                   the sea remind me

of you? 
            And when walking the shore,
as the pines waft up from the lakeside
my heart remembers the shape of your hands, and I do 
not weep.





Heeseo Lee is an eleventh-grader attending Korea International School in Seoul, South Korea. She is currently putting together her writing portfolio and was recently accepted into the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and the Kenyon Young Writers’ Workshop. In the past, she has attended both the Emerson Creative Writers Program and the Juniper Young Writers Institute. She has been published in various literary magazines in the past, and enjoys exploring fiction of all genres and poetry in her free time.