i profess to heaven that i want to breathe myself back to life, to stitch myself into blood & bone from the ashes. i decide that i believe in reincarnation, that if there is a next life, i want to be a moonflower. to worship the moon, to unfold & let the stars rapture me whole. i want to believe in love & eternity, to feel closer to my roots & never unearth myself. i want to believe in magic & time turning, to witness unmaking & disappearing acts in retrograde. to remember the scent of forgiveness on my heel. death is but a light wash & i want to remember to forget. to forget to remember. i want to never admit that i’ve fallen in love with a more beautiful version of myself. i want anything & everything & yet: judgement day & i profess to heaven that i don’t want redemption, that i don’t want second chances. i want to forget the taste of regret, to lace my unholy threads into dead knots. i want to write a will & leave everything of me to this ephemeral world. i want to tell myself that i want nothing & yet: 

i still write myself 
a eulogy, & from my 
throat: turgid rebirth. 
//

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Kayleigh Sim is a Southeast Asian writer living in San Diego, California whose work has been published or is forthcoming in Interstellar Lit, Aster Lit, The Global Youth Review, Clandestine Lit, The Augment Review, Pollux Journal, ​and elsewhere.