ARMY Magazine - Special Issues ARMY Magazine Namjoon Special Edition | Page 41

The next day
the bus hit hard on the brakes
and I rashly clutched a flailing
passenger’s wrist
to help them up.
I puzzled then,
what is it about wrists,
also, am I something to be taken away
or protected?”
She blinked all of a sudden and
her narration
perished into powdered blanket flowers.
I tried nodding and smiling along
but my eyes widened in panic
and my jaws began to hurt.
I had to get off the bus.
I decided to walk the rest of the way home.
It began to drizzle (of course) and
I covered my face in anguish;
I had unwittingly glimpsed
into her View and seen her wrists
were broken.
But she seemed all the more beautiful
to me
with those wispy, vermillion tendrils
on her wrists
in an immaculate disarray.
I looked behind as the bus’s aged hum
resounded away reassuringly;
it was a departure from a spot in time —
I kept on wanting to search for a forgotten
ticket in my pocket
but I had no pockets to begin with —
did the blue Giovanni feel this distraught
when he had to leave?
I looked above at the clustering clouds
covering the primrose way.
What immortal hand or eye
could paint thy fearful symmetry
O Light, hiding behind these flamingo
clouds?
Author’s note:
To my fellow ARMYs, I hope
you found reading this poem
meaningful. For my very first
draft, that I wrote on a bus
on my phone, the poem was
called ‘Spring Day’. But over
time it evolved into something
else. Now the title comes from
a phrase in a poem ‘Ode to a
Nightingale’ by John Keats. My
main intention with this poem
was to capture the lightness
of spring, so if you as a reader
were able to feel that, then I
think this poem was a success.
For the new ARMYs who might
not be aware, the base of this
poem carries the same core
message as BTS’s song ‘Spring
Day’. I have also alluded to
a few things that RM said in
this year’s Festa in the poem,
as well as added snippets of
writings by a few of my favorite
writers: E. M. Forster, Miyazawa
Kenji and William Blake. I hope
you have fun identifying these
allusions!
- aye
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