Vigil of the Ages
I have been waiting for all my life.
I wait for the peach that never ripens, the wine that never sets, the lover that never returns. I wait for Persephone to step out from the Underworld, for Demeter’s hand to paint the earth green. I sit in hospitals and train stations, courtrooms and temples. I look for the dove that flies after forty days of flood.
Summer is a Speck of Dust
Halmeoni spends weeks preparing for our summer visits. She goes to the wet markets to buy the choicest steaks and the roundest plums. She tends to her makeshift garden, harvesting minari and burdock, her back folded like origami paper as she hunches over the balcony greens. She lays short ribs and daikon, apple pears and gingko nuts into a ceramic pot to brew Galbijjim, skimming the fat and impurities off the surface each morning. She does this for days, and this work is not easy. No, this is a labor of love.
The Things I’ve Found:
Pearl-white chickweeds bursting through rocky asphalt as my sister and I walk from the bus stop back home. We braid flower crowns and play princess, and we come home bearing armloads of clumsy bouquets to give to our mother. She lets the weeds bathe in an empty jam jar and places them by the kitchen window. I watch them for days after, mesmerized by how the glass could melt slants of light into one rippling shadow.
The Violet Girl
With cheeks dewy as a spring leaf,
And a breath of milky white peaches,
You bloomed as a violet, blushing petals
Unfurling into a smile of brilliant sun.
Tomb Sweeping Day
The mountain rolls under tomb over tomb
Twisting the staircases built upon
The bowed backs of devotion
For Another Hour
The day is 24 hours long, yet none of them belong to me.
The right half of my body is too numb and heavy to move, my bladder loose and my lungs just barely breathing. Instead of a loving family by my bedside, I'm chained to a ventilator, a blood pressure monitor and a cardiac telemetry.
The River Beyond the Stream
Once, there was a village that sat atop of a small mountain, or a big hill, depending on which villager you asked. The village was little but lush, and the villagers, though not rich in jade or gold, were immensely proud of their rice paddies, which shimmered green in summer and gold in autumn.
The Price of Freedom
When Fu woke up in the mornings, Ma would already be gone. Every day, she would leave for the mountains before the sun could find their little hut, and returned when the only light remaining was the faint shine of the moon and the stars. Initially, Fu had insisted on coming with her, but he would always fall asleep, and fleet-footed Ma would slip out without so much as a tremor in the wind. He had gotten used to it now, but he still felt a pang of guilt when he woke up alone in their small hut.