Whakapapa

Gnarled rest-home fingers— like roots coiling into themselves —remember their parents.

Outside of this sitcom

we are doing a scene things are going great no one has forgotten a line, and everyone’s timing is on point a familiar little girl is peering in through the glass door behind the kitchen table we can just make her out she is very pretty, and is shyly mimicking our movements it looks like…

A Haibun by Bashō

I returned to my old home at the beginning of the ninth month. The day lilies in my mother’s room had all been withered by the frost, and nothing was left of them now. Everything was changed from what it used to be. My brother’s hair was white at the temples, and there were wrinkles…

희망 양 (Hope: Part four)

PART ONE, HERE | PART TWO, HERE | PART THREE, HERE | The world shakes and leaps from moment to moment. Subways smell of garlic, but there is no trace of kimchi. The men are brooding, with thick, arched brows and chiseled jaws. The women are waifish, with round doe-eyes and bangs. The space they…

희망 양 (Hope: Part three)

PART ONE, HERE | PART TWO, HERE | The cloud is no longer a cloud. It cannot remember floating though the house watching the family. It cannot remember crawling into the mother’s womb, nor dreaming of becoming a human child. It has returned to the world as flesh and blood; the newest member of a…

희망 양 (Hope: Part two)

PART ONE, HERE | Fourteen days later, the woman woke feeling nauseous to find light spotting on the bedsheets. She found this suspicious as it was not that time of the month. Having been through this two times already, she was fairly certain what it meant, but knew she would just have to wait and…

희망 양 (Hope: Part one)

In a small-to-medium-sized city at the southern end of South Korea, in a small but well-appointed apartment, there lived a kind and generous woman, full of good intentions for her husband and two young children. The husband—a primary school teacher—was also very kind, and full of love towards his family. The children were especially well-behaved,…

How have you blossomed?

Like a new flower unfurling: a dream towards the light. Beyond all obstacles; irrational. Like dried petals beneath the sun: I can only love you.

The cost of dreaming

Middle-class dreams in working-class sleeves Acquiring property and speaking of liberty like I learned in university Takes work to believe in our Middle-class dreams My cousin eats from bins he shoots Ritalin while I chew on vitamins Any way to feed all those Middle-class dreams

The eye of the storm

Tip toeing through the eye of the storm, my Aunty passed in a shadow – her white head buried in a black umbrella. A blur to her as I turned to watch her leave the past behind – in pursuit of 400 sleeping tablets. Tip toeing through the eye of the storm I sped, hoping…