Shinji Moon and aching honesty

"
Here’s what our parents never taught us:
You will stay up on your rooftop until sunlight peels away the husk of the moon,
chainsmoking cigarettes and reading Baudelaire, and
you will learn that you only ever want to fall in love with someone
who will stay up to watch the sun rise with you.
You will fall in love with train rides, and sooner or later you will
realize that nowhere seems like home anymore.
A woman will kiss you and you’ll think her lips are two petals
rubbing against your mouth.
You will not tell anyone that you liked it.
It’s okay.
It is beautiful to love humans in a world where love is a metaphor for lust.
You can leave if you want, with only your skin as a carry-on.
All you need is a twenty in your pocket and a bus ticket.
All you need is someone on the other end of the map, thinking about the supple
curves of your body, to guide you to a home that stretches out for miles
and miles on end.
You will lie to everyone you love.
They will love you anyways.
One day you’ll wake up and realize that you are too big for your own skin.
Molt.
Don’t be afraid.
Your body is a house where the shutters blow in and out
against the windowpane.
You are a hurricane-prone area.
The glass will break through often.
But it’s okay. I promise.
Remember,
a stranger once told you that the breeze
here is something worth writing poems about.
"

— “Here’s What Our Parents Never Taught Us,” Shinji Moon

This is what I love about the Internet. I struck gold on Tumblr today. I had reblogged this poem ages ago but only really gave it a brief read. How extremely careless and unfair of me. Something made me read it again today and that was when I knew I had to find out more about Shinji Moon. This girl is only 18 and she hasn't yet been published (although I cannot understand why). Does age dictate the quality of literature?

I find her writing is achingly honest and unpretentious. I feel as though many young writers have been holed into the "pretentious" and "indie-wannabe" categories when all they really wanted to do was to have a platform to share their work. I guess it's up to our own (the reader's) discrepancy to differentiate heartfelt honesty from fluff. However, it is obvious through her writing that she is still young and idealistic, angsty and pliable. But since when is that a bad thing? Don't we all recall the malleable stage of our lives? 

I've never been much of a fan of poems. Perhaps it is because I've never really been exposed to it much. I've always considered myself to be more of a languid-paragraphs-full-of-text kind of person over succinctly phrased stanzas but Shinji Moon made me want to reanalyse my bearings and reorganise my heart. 

Read her interview with Dream Hunt Magazine here and you can find more of her writings here. The more I read about her, I more I liked her and wanted to read more. I particularly enjoyed her response to the reason why she writes and this poem choked me up.