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in the first grade i remember hanging my head low
when my umma introduced herself
as yoojin. i remember feeling so grateful
that my name was not korean, for i had shed
that name in skins. i’d already known that i shouldn’t
bring bibimbap for lunch, that it would smell bad
and look as if my kitchen unpeeled itself. reading
“Choi Jeong Min” was sinking into my past.
i grazed on it and let it fill my bedroom, seeing
how i could find myself in your words, how
my childhood seeped through the page. i knew
this “paper thin & raceless” you wrote. in there,
i see my pigtails and bangs as if i were a doll
of sorts. i never liked dolls, but i played with one
in my halmoni’s apartment in seoul. it was
a russian stacking doll, one you’d crack open
to find another to find another. i think there were five
in the one i used, and i always felt like the smallest—
the last. my american had hidden the korean,
and maybe one day, my korean would
disappear. i wished it would. i wished
halmoni didn’t speak korean every day and let me be.
i, too, wished i didn’t have “garlic breath” after i ate
her soondubu jjigae. i wished i wasn’t so far away.
but now, when i think of college, i wonder what i’ll eat
if not korean food, if not soondubu jjigae
by umma’s side. she tells me she won’t miss me,
but then she laughs and feeds me more. in english class,
we’re discussing immigration as one aspect of american
literature, yet i do not believe america
is as much a home as some think. my parents’ home
is still oceans away. they tell me they hope
to go back there, and i wonder why
they came here in the first place. if they go, i will
follow. i’ll get lost in their streets and maybe find
my way to the yogurt lady who used to come
by the house, her face as banana milk as mine. then,
i wouldn’t forget. when they’d ask me my name,
i’d tell them i’m yoonjin, spun from “minor chord”
and “gook name.” and like you, i confess. only years later
did i know that halmoni had cancer, that god may give
and god may take. in two years, i hope to go back
to her and step inside her apartment, for i know
it’ll seem like home. by then, i may know how to cook jjigae.
i’ll welcome others there too with my broken
konglish slipping out of my mouth. i forget
when i left my mother tongue, but i think it’s still
there in the stacking doll, folded within the layers of foreign
that seemed so smooth. maybe then, i’ll feel
its doll casings like the palms of halmoni,
only rougher than the year before. halmoni’s hair spills
out slowly, and she bends to the floor as she steps. i hope
she stays long enough for me to say thank you
and hold her hand. then, i will unravel
the stacking doll and press a star into halmoni’s hand
so that someday, i may find her. i haven’t
seen “the star” yet, but i will if this “factory yard”
lets me go. then, i’ll follow it back.
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[av_one_half]Esther Kim is a Korean-American writer from Potomac, Maryland. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in SOFTBLOW, Lunch Ticket, & Half Mystic, among others. In the summer of 2019, she participated in the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. A high school junior, she has been recognized by the Library of Congress, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards as a National Gold Medalist, The Atlantic, & the Poetry Society of the UK.[/av_one_half]
[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”]Best Sneakers | Footwear