#59

Trip to Seoul. Return. Jeehyun and I at tables dull in summer light. This street called . . . ? Spell it in signs. Remembering. Korea or Macao? Mom and dad in sandy cove, great crag and waterfall behind. Stone-hopping in white hightops. Photo-image: her raven hair, dark tresses streaming past shoulders, ripples in the breeze. Mine own bestrewn with lice, and the Korean barber who will not cut it close. "All of it off!" my father says, loud and slow, his hands flying round his head in scalping motions. And the word like a slew of pebbles from my tongue: Come-saw-hum-me-da. Silver light.

By the button, she holds his book, curlicues of critical marginalia: "Wants the form. No, but language barrier. p 137." She fingers her necklace. "Hey mates!" Square's faux-English. Descending the stairs, suit and tie. To the bench where we sit, and the voice nears. "What you pigeons doing?"

Not enough. So easy to sew in words. None of that sitting with words of our own, illuminated letters under lamplight. Never meant for another. In this book, read: "The hole that we all have." Between ass and mouth. Jeehyun's corner room in autumn. The cigarette in Erica's hand. In his copy of Stephen Hero, Jon has marked in pencil a line. Tentative signs: proof. All of this, recycle.