The Last Day of 2023
It may feel endless—
this flow of money, consumed and devoured,
drunk on and indulged in.
But even that will run dry someday.
None of what I enjoy now is a given.
Nothing is infinite.
Even the word love,
so easily spoken in the belief that it lasts forever—
will one day come to its end.
It was the beginning of September,
at the edge of autumn.
That girl sobbing on the plane, unable to catch her breath,
was still me.
And the scars I carved into my thigh after returning to London,
hastily, blindly—
they remain,
healed perhaps, or overgrown,
but still stained with shadow.
And yet,
they are still my skin.
Still my flesh.
I have always wanted to live as someone in transit.
But even so,
some people have made me want to settle.
To stay.
To remain near the ones I love:
S and the mountain stream behind the cats,
a perfectly ripe peach.
N and I at the Han River in Mangwon,
its flow, its summer nights.
H’s farewell—
I think of her whenever I’m in Shoreditch.
L and the figs,
and our midnight talk of indulgence, curled into bed.
Milk tea at that café in Sinchon with J,
Vivienne Westwood on our minds.
And H in Paris,
offering the kind of comfort only she could afford.
Your sorrow and your ruin,
always noble and vast in my eyes—
the long black hair that endlessly plunged into it.
I watched your falling reverence with open eyes.
The gentlest, kindest people I’ve known
have always had a shadow.
And I witnessed it—up close.
Two letters of apology.
A confession, whispered before dawn.
Two trips to Paris,
one to Sweden,
and another to Berlin—
still,
realizing I have achieved nothing at all.
And the self-loathing that follows.
Even now, fullness feels like guilt.
Water and air feel like things borrowed.
In my June journal, I once wrote:
“Maybe the soul’s weight is proportional to the body.”
Only S would understand that.
At times I feel the love I give is too much,
and the love I receive is far too little.
Then, suddenly, I suspect it’s the opposite—
that what I give is hollow,
and what I receive, enormous.
I say I love the rain now—
because of what happened that summer night
in the alleys of Itaewon.
But London’s timid, cowardly drizzle
still frustrates me.
Here in this city,
I find peace in anonymity.
But at the same time,
I tremble at the thought of being unknown.
Year’s end,
new beginnings,
“Happy New Year,”
“fresh start”—
time flows on, indifferent as always.
And yet, because one bold number on the calendar changes,
we celebrate with wild cheer.
There’s something strange about that fleeting joy.
Still, I let it shake me.
Everything means too much—
so much it suffocates me.
But a minute later,
nothing matters at all.
No meaning can be found.
One moment, I feel electric,
as if I could be anything.
The next, I’m ash—
my sense of self crumbling.
I stare at my broken self,
alone.
Endlessly thinking,
guarded,
tight with tension.
Restless fatigue becomes my default.
I feel disillusioned
by a world I can’t seem to belong to.
And yet, I still can’t abandon it.
I look into space
as if looking into myself—
but always meet others’ eyes
with tenderness.
These feelings,
and those feelings too—
just like last year,
and the year before.
Layered high,
they drag me down.
I get lost in the tangled circuits of my mind.
The map in my hands
soaked and torn by sweat—
but that only makes me try harder
to look like I know the way.
The insides of a maggot
dressed in something cute.
I grow tired of hating myself in that gap—
and so I start loving others again.
Only to find, once more,
a piece of myself in them.
But still,
still—
I could never truly hate them.
So I play music,
and let the hours pass
soaked in self-pity.
Yet even in all that mess—
there was love.
Undeniably.
No matter where I was headed,
even as I wept and parted ways in a rush—
I kept loving.
I kept connecting.
This was the last day
of twenty-twenty-three.
Farewell.
Threshold
2023-2024
mixed media
About
Not This World, But That One
Feb -
Between Mental Illness and Kindness
Ruminations
ⓒ 2025 Moussy
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