Like this:
Trees snap wetly beneath the weight of
night falling. Blood orange sun springs citrus
between limbs, bleeding
into smog-filled
skyline: perfume that reads, “Apocalypse.
I see this from the back porch, breathing too-still
air. Each breath lodges like little stones,
rattling with each swallow. Like a pocket watch
stuffed down twisting trachea.
One two. Tick tock.
I gasp – like clockwork.
Asphyxiation is equal to midnight.
We have brought this upon ourselves.
Night falls face first, never gets up again.
Brandon Kim is a rising senior currently attending Culver City High School. An alumnus of the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, the Iowa Young Writers Studio and the Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute, he has been awarded in the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards and Letters about Literature. He is the editor-in-chief of his school newspaper The Centaurian and a reader for Polyphony Lit. He also serves as editor-in-chief for his literary magazine, YAWP, which he co-founded. Brandon is an avid hiker and lives in Culver City with his family.