Heather Qin
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Heather Qin (she/her) is a student from New Jersey. She is an alumnus of the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. Besides writing, Heather loves classical music and reading.
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Racing Into the Night
after Ayase
In my first memory, our new apartment still ached
with wet paint and you mistook beginnings
for endings. It was afternoon and you
were intoxicated. Your hair was slathered
lichen. I stand on the balcony, the one you gazed at. Before
we moved in, we were told the previous owner had
a sickly wife. A wife who flung herself, daylight
scissoring each broken bone. I shared two cocktails
with the ghosts of you I trick myself into seeing. You
claimed to speak their language. Are you a ghost?
You laughed, said you wish. Old notebooks, dead
birds speared with broken glass, eggshells drowned
in yolk— that’s what you left. I always hated how you watched
the world through the window of a moving train,
far away. What do I cherish? Those times we stole
the lip gloss we could never afford from Hermes, chased
our vacations across the airport runway, shared
black coffee while you listened to me through
the wrong end of the playground
megaphone. On your birthday, you flew
off our fire escape, mistook recklessness
for courage, multiplying the suns until you knew
the shadow of death. You are good. I repeated it
until you nodded, having forgotten your name
while Mitski spun through hospital speakers, throat still
tight like a fist. I open the windows to air out
each promise you made. How lucky, living in a world
where another’s yes is a means of survival. Am I a good person
yet? I’m sorry I keep gorging myself on what
nobody wants to hear. When October moved
in across the street, you dream three nights in a row
about dying in a train crash, windows and rails
shattering across the sky. Only this time, I tell you
to get off the train. It’s cold outside, but let’s walk instead.
In my first memory, our new apartment still ached
with wet paint and you mistook beginnings
for endings. It was afternoon and you
were intoxicated. Your hair was slathered
lichen. I stand on the balcony, the one you gazed at. Before
we moved in, we were told the previous owner had
a sickly wife. A wife who flung herself, daylight
scissoring each broken bone. I shared two cocktails
with the ghosts of you I trick myself into seeing. You
claimed to speak their language. Are you a ghost?
You laughed, said you wish. Old notebooks, dead
birds speared with broken glass, eggshells drowned
in yolk— that’s what you left. I always hated how you watched
the world through the window of a moving train,
far away. What do I cherish? Those times we stole
the lip gloss we could never afford from Hermes, chased
our vacations across the airport runway, shared
black coffee while you listened to me through
the wrong end of the playground
megaphone. On your birthday, you flew
off our fire escape, mistook recklessness
for courage, multiplying the suns until you knew
the shadow of death. You are good. I repeated it
until you nodded, having forgotten your name
while Mitski spun through hospital speakers, throat still
tight like a fist. I open the windows to air out
each promise you made. How lucky, living in a world
where another’s yes is a means of survival. Am I a good person
yet? I’m sorry I keep gorging myself on what
nobody wants to hear. When October moved
in across the street, you dream three nights in a row
about dying in a train crash, windows and rails
shattering across the sky. Only this time, I tell you
to get off the train. It’s cold outside, but let’s walk instead.
Commentary
Heather on “Racing Into the Night”:
In 2020, I first heard Yoasobi's “Racing into the Night,” a deceptively upbeat song that shot to fame online despite its darker lyrics: they describe the speaker struggling to live with their partner who wishes to take her own life. I began writing the poem in the summer of 2022, conceived as a loose bundle of abstractions only a few lines long— I didn't know what I wanted to say or where I wanted to go with it. When I shared the piece in a workshop, I realized how much I was dancing around the topic. I never dared to start a difficult conversation about the importance of reaching out to others for fear the meanings were a few sizes too big, too heavy for the words. After months of revision, I realized I wanted the piece to be a response, an aftermath, and most importantly an alternative story, serving as a sort of 'memory capsule' for the 'she' that the speaker is trying to hold onto.
The original song depicted a romantic relationship between two characters trying to understand each other, with the partner’s sentiment beginning to bleed into the speaker’s. Yet here, the speaker already understands their partner’s self-destructive tendencies and wants to help her as another human (and less so as a partner). Dead birds and eggshells, city trains and coffee— these details serve to capture the little mundane things that we take for granted, and they were the fragmented images I thought of before the poem’s narrative was anchored. Loneliness was normalized under pandemic restrictions, and even romanticized for the belief that it allows people complete control over their lives. I wanted to explore a version of the story where birthdays might not translate into happiness and trains don't always take us to our destinations, but the bonds between us serve as lifelines rather than telephone lines.
General Editor Belinda Munyeza on “Racing Into the Night”:
This poem starts out strong with lines and images that immediately awaken the senses. The first couple of lines plunge us right in the centre of the narrative. Then, Qin begins to layer image over image that brings us even closer to the world the speaker is reflecting on and painting a picture of. Using alliterations and sibilance, the poet makes it easy for us to glide through the piece like a dance. But slowly, the images become sharper, darker and the dense sibilance becomes almost insidious; seeming to foreshadow the tragedy to come in later parts of the poem. Furthermore, as the poem unfolds, we begin to feel the poignancy of grief as the poet employs rhetorical questions to explore the unanswered questions that remain after tragedy strikes. The poem’s language continues to intensify towards the end; painting a devastating but gorgeous narrative that ultimately culminates in a slow emergence from the darkness. But still, elements of this darkness haunt the reader at the very end, making the poem linger beautifully.
In 2020, I first heard Yoasobi's “Racing into the Night,” a deceptively upbeat song that shot to fame online despite its darker lyrics: they describe the speaker struggling to live with their partner who wishes to take her own life. I began writing the poem in the summer of 2022, conceived as a loose bundle of abstractions only a few lines long— I didn't know what I wanted to say or where I wanted to go with it. When I shared the piece in a workshop, I realized how much I was dancing around the topic. I never dared to start a difficult conversation about the importance of reaching out to others for fear the meanings were a few sizes too big, too heavy for the words. After months of revision, I realized I wanted the piece to be a response, an aftermath, and most importantly an alternative story, serving as a sort of 'memory capsule' for the 'she' that the speaker is trying to hold onto.
The original song depicted a romantic relationship between two characters trying to understand each other, with the partner’s sentiment beginning to bleed into the speaker’s. Yet here, the speaker already understands their partner’s self-destructive tendencies and wants to help her as another human (and less so as a partner). Dead birds and eggshells, city trains and coffee— these details serve to capture the little mundane things that we take for granted, and they were the fragmented images I thought of before the poem’s narrative was anchored. Loneliness was normalized under pandemic restrictions, and even romanticized for the belief that it allows people complete control over their lives. I wanted to explore a version of the story where birthdays might not translate into happiness and trains don't always take us to our destinations, but the bonds between us serve as lifelines rather than telephone lines.
General Editor Belinda Munyeza on “Racing Into the Night”:
This poem starts out strong with lines and images that immediately awaken the senses. The first couple of lines plunge us right in the centre of the narrative. Then, Qin begins to layer image over image that brings us even closer to the world the speaker is reflecting on and painting a picture of. Using alliterations and sibilance, the poet makes it easy for us to glide through the piece like a dance. But slowly, the images become sharper, darker and the dense sibilance becomes almost insidious; seeming to foreshadow the tragedy to come in later parts of the poem. Furthermore, as the poem unfolds, we begin to feel the poignancy of grief as the poet employs rhetorical questions to explore the unanswered questions that remain after tragedy strikes. The poem’s language continues to intensify towards the end; painting a devastating but gorgeous narrative that ultimately culminates in a slow emergence from the darkness. But still, elements of this darkness haunt the reader at the very end, making the poem linger beautifully.
