the Young Adult's urge at midnight

Fiona Jin, United States

to shut off instagram & drive away for the bookstore. in the parking lot’s congealed cold & swollen darkness, glowing windows unblink & unsow. fluorescent lights haunt dehydrated souls pacing, hunching, wanting. march in with the YA brashness of your sixteen years, each stacked puckered like novels. unbind yourself. rip the spine. black out the words. until you are no more. contemptuously, let yourself fall into

a picture book. & another. & another. this is who we are tonight—paper against trembling fingers. our youth against the world. some part of us is child & i must claim it once more.

Fiona is a high school poet and artist in the Chicago Metropolitan Area. She was born in 2007 but feels infinitesimally much older and younger at the same time. Her work has received recognition from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She insists on using a fountain pen and can be found trying to put her fractured soul back together.