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      • The Floor Wallows Lower
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      • mom, im afraid
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      • If a poisonous snake bites itself, will it die?
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      • A Night in Recovery
      • sleeping gypsie
      • paper dolls&goodbyes
      • We Are Women
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      • the male gaze
      • The Forensic Entomologist
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      • Adelie
    • Create the Wonders We Dream (2021)
    • Editor's Note >
      • Zove
      • I'm Sorry
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      • My Friend the Balloon
      • Eyes Intertwined
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      • A Dangerous Word
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      • The Last 100 Meters
      • The Green Void (Villanelle)
      • The Whimsical Galaxy (Sestina)
      • The Silent Kindness
      • Pressure
      • Table on the Hill
      • The Yukon
      • The Shore
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      • Carved By Venus
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      • What is a Spork
      • What is the difference between love and in love
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      • The Journey of a Minute
      • The Circus of Scars
      • Mosaic
      • Color
      • Love and Acceptance
    • Colors I Never Knew Existed (2020)
    • Her Voice Remains (2017)
    • Watch Every Second (2018)
    • Words Become Reality (2019)
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paper dolls&goodbyes
By: Kay Lee

Picture
i.
dear mother,
do you remember when we folded little paper dolls on the
floor of the living room six years ago and sent them off on adventures again,
again, until their little smiling faces were crumpled, bodies ripped and stained?
you told me today that whenever you dream you can only
dream of yourself- that you must be the strongest, the coolest, the smartest.
that whenever you dream and wake up you can only look down
at yourself and feel ashamed.
whenever i dream i dream of colliding worlds and crashing stars.
not once have i dreamed of myself.
when i wake, it’s to a gentle kind of longing for a world kinder than this.
i think that maybe im okay with being a little paper doll with a crumpled face.
but i think you want to be a clay doll. a cloth doll.
perhaps a stuffed doll.
maybe all at once.
you told me you wanted a room for yourself. that you’d never once
had your own bed or your own makeup mirror as a kid- that the first
thing you’d do is buy it for yourself and stare into it all day in your own room.
maybe this is something that i cannot understand, for i
grew up on empty rooms and quiet halls, but mother,
when i think about a world like that
i dont think i could stand it.
for the longest time, i thought you were
a clay doll. porcelain. the best doll that there possibly could be.
maybe im wrong. maybe im just being foolish.
but now i think
that maybe you’re also a paper doll like i am,
but every morning you uncrumple your face&pretend you’re not.

ii.
dear dad,
i miss
you even when you’re
                                  next
                                  to
                                  me
im not quite sure

what it means.

iii.
dear farewell,
i suppose it’s a bit of a sad thing, that you can only bear
witness to the odd longing of ‘goodbye’s, and you can never
experience the glorious ‘hello’s- the meeting of paths,
the crossing of footsteps, the trails left
behind.

‘in another life, we could have...’
                  ‘if only, we might have...’
                                   ‘if we could have done... then maybe...’
humans are foolish.
there is no other life. no ‘might have’s or ‘could have’s.
there is no such thing as ‘maybe’.
there is only ‘hello’ and ‘farewell’ , and most times,

we are the ones
who choose
when the latter occurs.

Writer's Statement: Kay Lee is a tenth-grader attending Korea International School in Seoul, South Korea. She is currently putting together her writing portfolio and was recently accepted into Juniper's Young Writers Program.

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