Jimmy Ryoo 6PM

6PM Jimmy Ryoo Washington University in St. Louis, ’20 Photography

for Pablo

you showed me your new board when I was six and wonder-sick and you were the dilapidated cul de sac god of everything my parents hated

and you could ride the handrail and do jump tricks and play a decent drum solo on an upturned butter tub and you liked to smoke before thanksgiving dinner because you said it made our great aunt funnier

and you shredded your knees on gravel and collapsed into shrubs and you once dislocated your shoulder in mexico, fell fifty feet trying to get a coconut for your mother from a palm tree

and you wore cracked teeth and harem pants the last time I saw you and strapped a denim sling to your chest’s bare blues

but you licked the bruise, you said, plant seeds, you said, the sky changes color twice a day for free.

Emma Bernstein Cornell University, ’21