driving to the end of the world with a soft-brown

boy as we laugh to titanic

Carina Solis

i woke up and thought myself a ladybug. i perched on basil leaves. chewed through
their paper-light hearts. but my freckles are not beautiful. they are benign moles.
birth-marked packaging. i wish i was untouched. touched, by the smoothness of a
brown boy. it is dusk. we are soft. we reach at the strawberry-glazed night and paint melts
onto our fingers. you hold my cheeks, draw inked stars over my palms. you ask me to
drive with you to the end of the world. in your midnight acura, we go forth. the titanic
soundtrack plays in the background. you hold my hand, grip the steering wheel.
sixty miles per hour. seventy miles per hour. celine reaches her high note. we are laughing so hard.
our ribs burst from our bodies. you love me like a ladybug. i am so pretty, you say. boy, tell me.
how is everything you do so inexplicably beautiful?

Carina Solis is a fifteen-year-old writer living in Georgia. Her work has been recognized or is forthcoming in the Eunoia Review, Wrongdoing Mag, Gone, and elsewhere. She is an editor at Polyphony Lit, an intern at Young Eager Writers, and a mentee at Ellipsis Writing & the Daphne Review. In her free time, she enjoys baking and bingewatching k-dramas.