“Sincerely Casket”

Daniel Son, South Korea

Creators of Justice Award 2022 | Second Prize: Youth

Daniel (he/him) is a current senior at Phillips Academy Andover from Seoul, South Korea. He enjoys playing the cello, as well as cooking and boxing. Most of all, though, Daniel likes going for evening walks with his french bulldog, Bookie.

Sincerely, Casket

For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
– Ecclesiastes 9:5

Dear Daniel’s Corpse,

I enjoy feeling
Your cold shell of a person Pressed against my floor.

Your hollow gaze
Seeks but does not find,
Met only by my hard wood glaze.

Your feeble fingertips Reach for my seals, Motionless in pursuit.

Your pallor lips
Plead me to release you Let you go, let you free

Oh, the humor!
To think death the curse And life the blessing.

So tell me,
Are you happy with how you lived? Yes, you do not say.

Silence confirms my horror.
I enjoy carrying you no more. To shame myself with you.

What would my creator think?
The hours upon hours,
The sleepless nights spent carving me.

What would your creator think?

A boy who thought his life be better Keeping his head down,
Causing no ripples
But the bubbles of his own drowning.

I laugh in scorn.
A lifetime you lived. A lifetime you wasted.

I guess we were made for each other then; Each unable to fulfill his purpose,
Each unable to keep his promise.

So underground we go, Clinging to one another For the rest of eternity.

Pink Sunglasses

To wear pink sunglasses,
To see and yet to not
The “La Vie en Rose”
The guise of a perfect world

Here, hear breaking news, Not breaking nooses.
And do jump bridges With a parachute.

I no longer hear the muffled moans When my mother murmurs, Murmurs of another mother
Who murdered her own child.

Pink sunglasses
Do indeed
Do their due diligence: Don’t disrespect my truth.

Bare-eyed I mistakenly eye
A kid gunned down
For looking like I do
The blood stains on his shoes –

I put on my pink shades,
That shade me from reality
The different shades of troubled youth And now I find a newfound truth.

Now I see a clumsy klutz Who tripped and fell in rain My red-pilled reality
Now fading to a blue

Pink sunglasses: from calling 9-1- 1 to being on cloud nine one
fun afternoon turned
pink and now the boy is rescued.

Knowledge is power, they say But power to do what?
To live a life of misery
Of thinking of the dismal, we

Deserve better. Don’t we?