Through the Wall — Jihoo Bae

The sound of a party through the wall—
not music, exactly, but the shape of joy,
muffled and wrong-shaped,
like trying to wear someone else’s childhood.

Laughter behind a door that’s not yours
ripples like wind chimes in a neighbor’s yard,
a melody you don’t remember learning,
a story you were never written into.

The glow under a closed door
spills across your feet like it might mean come in,
but doesn’t. It never does.
You wait anyway. Just in case.

The porch light left on for someone else
casts long shadows you mistake for belonging.
You step toward it, then back.
Some things are not yours to walk into.

A fire you can see but never touch
burns behind glass in another version of home,
where the scent of cake from the apartment below
rises through vents like a hymn you can’t hum.

You follow footsteps fading down the wrong hallway
until they’re gone—just soft memory in carpet pile.
Even your name feels borrowed.
Even your shadow forgets to follow.

And then—silence.
But not the kind that forgets.
The kind that knows your name
and whispers it through the wall.

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Jihoo Bae is a writer from South Korea. As a recipient of 2 Gold keys from the Scholastics Art and Writing Awards, and an alumnus of the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, several original works of his were selected and published in literary magazines like Not One of Us, Hey! Young Writer and others. He is currently working as a poetry editor for Polyphony Lit and is a portfolio group member of CWC, a creative writing club. He is an avid enjoyer of poetry, novels, cereal boxes, and anything he can get his hands on.