3 poems

By Jennifer Choi

Chadwick International School

annotations in a semiotics class 

In my world, there are more humans than people, 
& i wonder how many 
i could truly love in between. 
Outside felt warmer than in that winter, 
& they said the first snow would fall soon. 

Burying my nose in my scarf, 
i caught a scent i knew by heart. 
It was the kind of winter 
i wouldn’t mind returning to, 
an empty hallway in late December, 
quiet as a held breath. 

Snow— 

if there’s someone to meet it with, 

then even if it stings, 

even if it doesn’t, 

the light still blinds, 

sharp as a flake of ice on the tip of your nose. 

Snow settles softly on the scarf. 
Imagining the weight of it, 

i find myself back in the classroom. 
From the farthest desk, 
i pull my chair close, 
press my cheek against the cool surface, 
& look past the window. 

Somehow, the snow fills the pane, 
uneven & dazzling— 
like the colored sands of an ant farm.
White.
Cold brilliance. 

When i tell strangers who i am,
time dissolves like snowflakes,
melting but never gone. 

When the snow stops, 
I’ll undo my scarf, 
slip it quietly 
into a desk that isn’t mine.

The Weight of Blue Glass Dreams 

They say eternity doesn’t exist in this world. 
A young god sleeps, growing quietly in a house of glowing glass walls—
a place so luminous, so full, it needs no sunlight to shine. In the front
yard, where the low garden bed grows wild, a ball rolls away sometimes,
drifting too far to follow, 
& truthfully, no one feels like chasing it. 
By the dry edge of a waterless shore, 
I once thought about the world’s collapse, 
what might bring it down, 
& how everything eventually ends. 
Yes, there’s no such thing as eternity here. 

The heavy blue landscape I set in motion yesterday lost its way & hasn’t come back. 
The pages of my journal turn as they please, 
& now I know this: 
death never loses its way. 

Its pace keeps shifting. 
The young god has learned this too. 
Behind the white house, 
a low, pale shadow stretches, 
but the flowers stay where they are— 
gentle, cold, perfectly still. 
Sometimes, this place feels so clean, 
so soft & unyielding, 
I imagine a world where gods & humans alike 
could quietly die together, 
& it would still be beautiful.

Chimney’s mood

You throw the vase 
as if it were your shattered life, 
broken beyond repair. 

At noon, 
you collapse to the ground, 
& the sun blazes defiantly overhead. 

You feel mocked by everything— the
way the chairs are arranged, the
relentless march of the calendar, a
misplaced nail ruining the whole wall. 

But none of it matters; 
your old dog keeps scratching at the
wall, insistently, endlessly. 

There’s nothing there. 
No apple carving its blade, 
no wound deeper than the cut itself.
Stab if you must, 
carve if you must— 

we still have to live, 
& our faces will be slashed with
scars. Looking back, even collapsing 
feels tiresome. 

So you layer darkness upon
darkness, murmuring, It’s fine, it’s
fine, 
calming the old dog, 
& head out to buy a new vase. 

Unaware that the shattered one 
was the most radiant of all, 
unaware of the shards of
memory lodged deep in your
heart.

Jennifer Choi is a passionate high school student. Her love for poetry began at an early age, and she finds inspiration in exploring themes of identity, love, and the complexities of the human experience through her writing.