‘Hymn for the Unmapped Woman’ & Other Works
Kyuwan Kim is a student at Newton Academy in South Korea
Hymn for the Unmapped Woman
no one clapped
when she stopped answering emails.
no parade when she put her body
into the ocean instead of a chair
with lumbar support.
they say:
find yourself.
but they mean
on LinkedIn.
she unpeopled herself slowly.
unzipped her spine.
poured out her mother’s
calendars,
her boss’s bullet points,
all the passwords she ever
pretended were secure.
now:
she wears silence
like a robe of kelp.
lets it cling in holy green sheets,
dripping pearls from each elbow.
the sea does not know her job title.
the gulls do not cc her on threads.
the water calls her "here."
she floats in the gap between
heartbeat and forgetting—
where names dissolve
in the back of her throat like seawater.
the tide does not applaud.
it cradles.
when she returns
no one notices.
but her feet
remember.
Object Label Reads: Woman, Mid-Escape
do not tap the glass.
she is still molting.
note the scar along her throat,
fluent in meeting dialect.
her jaw still clicks
when spoken over.
watch her hands twitch
toward a calendar.
gently redirect them
toward anything alive.
in this enclosure,
she forgets what’s expected.
laughs at her own voice,
an animal learning its growl.
her spine, once a filing cabinet,
bends now toward sun.
unclear if she’s breaking
or blooming.
in the corner, discarded agendas.
a badge: i’m fine.
a ghost in a pantsuit
nodding politely.
warning:
she recently discovered no.
do not attempt to domesticate her:
she is not metaphor.
not your tragic exhibit.
not your gratitude lesson.
she is an exit wound
and entry point.
she is paint still wet.
stand back.
this exhibit bites.
Final Days of the Museum of You
on the last day,
the museum lets her out.
the placard curled,
the velvet rope slack,
someone forgot to lock the glass.
she walks barefoot past
paintings of her old selves:
Girl Balancing All the Things,
Woman Digesting Applause,
Portrait with No Mouth, Only Email.
she peels herself
off the brochure.
pours out of the gift shop mug
marked Resilient.
the docents don’t stop her.
they're busy rehearsing
a new exhibit:
American Afterburn.
in the atrium,
she climbs the marble like a pulpit,
screams until the chandler quivers,
not for help, but to feel the silence fracture.
the light cuts her name into her
in a font no one can pronounce.
outside, the world smells like
wet metal & second chances.
she doesn't run.
she saunters.
she flickers.
she forgets the hours.
forgets the maps.
every exit sign
glows different now.
Meg Taylor writes poems that teeter between collapse and clarity, often exploring the beautiful strangeness of becoming someone new. Their work examines burnout, gendered performance, and late self-awakening through a surreal, emotionally raw lens. Recent work appears in Beyond Words Magazine and Neon Origami and is forthcoming in Wingless Dreamer and Fjords Review.
