Your eyes shine when you see a small snail on the way to class, and one corner of your lips lifts just a bit higher than the other when you’re amused. The thick waves of your hair curl around your shoulders in a protective embrace, and the scar on the tip of your elbow is barely noticeable, just a thin white thread of past mistakes. The way you walk is smooth and silent, but your footsteps are loud when you come down the stairs. When you hold my hands in yours, I know that those slender fingers will tuck themselves neatly between my first and second knuckles, intertwining our digits in an intimate grip.

I don’t want to let you go, Seulgi.

I know that I’m the one leaving, but I feel like I’m the one who will experience the greatest loss. Despite the burning sensations that crawl along the finest hairs on my skin, the linings of my failing organs, all I can focus on is the way that my heart clenches whenever I see you, hard enough to make me stop breathing, to feel a pain greater than what I actually experience. I’m going to miss you, but at the same time, can I miss you if I no longer am? Will our beautiful memories really become just a one-sided story in which I have been erased and taken the inner narrative of my gaze with me? Seulgi, do you know how much I have to say to you?

I’m not quite sure if you’re here right now, in this moment when I am both myself and no longer myself. There’s an odd peace within me as the so