Close my eyes

Plug my ears

to isolate myself from the world

to ignore what other people say
.
..
...
....
.....
......

then again, i start looking for people to find that comfort

the warm comfort that i am addicted to

since the first time i opened my eyes,

cried outloud to inform people and the world about my existence.

the song

warmth arising around my eyes,

electrostimulation occuring around my nose,

and my heart, pounding and pounding.

it's that song that makes my eyes teary, my nose bitter, and my heart achy.

We all love to walk to a different direction from where we are supposed to walk to. Don't we?

Morning Blues

Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
I squeeze my body into the rectangular car,

Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
I can’t even breathe anymore,
I have no where to escape.

Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
I roll over my eyes,
to the right,
to the left,
to the top,
to the bottom,

And still,
I have no where to runaway.

…………….

No one speaks,
No one moves,
Not even the rectangular car that
has been absorbing itself into the labyrinth,
the endless labyrinth,



And I am thinking to myself,

surrounded by complete strangers,
smelling a white boy’s greasy hair that stuck in front of my face,
feeling a Hispanic woman staring at me frowning
hearing a Black boy’s loud music screaming out of his I-pod,
looking at an Asian woman’s New York Times,
across the shoulder of an European guy who has been napping and snoring,
reading the back page of the paper as she’s reading the front page, what is going on in this world,

What am I doing here?

Abandoning all the sweet comforts in my home,
studying other’s language,
forgetting my language,
appreciating other’s culture,
ignoring my culture,

And still,

Feeling insecure, inferior and alone,
and struggling, struggling and struggling.

What am I doing here?
Why am I here?
Why does my heart ache?

Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,
Cling, Cling, Bam, Bam,

The rectangular car starts to march into the labyrinth again




And I,
I, too, march into the labyrinth,
disguising myself as if I am one of them,
pretending nothing happened in my mind,
and again, hoping that I will become successful
here,
one day,

and starting my day again,

As if I am one of them.

Blank

I am writing this to record memories that would churn my heart. Although I am very well aware that the memories would ache my heart terribly like someone thrusts my skin with a needle, I want to remember them, vividly. I never want to forget them and I never ever want to forget him.

Everyone fantasizes of a dangerous and clandestine affair at least once in his or her life time. I, too, never wanted to be an exception. But I never expected this affair to linger in my heart as a stone. Like anybody else, I wanted to be a protagonist of a story, a woman who is loved by a man, not a woman who has to carry an emotional burden that tears down and eats up her fragile heart.

There was a little girl who jumped into the sea on a very hot day of early June without hearing her mother shouting at her, “Be careful! It’s dangerous!” When the waves rolled all of a sudden, her body became paralyzed and numbed with pain; she could not buffer the wave anymore and, eventually, drowned.

I was that little girl who was infatuated by a dangerous temptation that appeared to me suddenly. Now, I am floating around him and being engulfed quickly into a labyrinth. Like a paralyzed little girl in the ocean whose respiration has ceased, I cannot do anything but think of him, even when I close my eyes and plug my ears.

And i think about him even when he lays down next to me.

*********** Skip ****************

Have I made a terrible decision that night?

"Do You Think of Me When We Are Not Together?"

"Do you think of me when we are not together..."

She carefully typed. Her eyes, fixed at the computer screen. Her body, glued in the chair.

Delete.

She clicked. Then again, she typed carefully letter by letter: ‘D. o. y. o. u. t. h. i. n. k. o. f. m. e….’ her lips slightly moved as she typed the letters. Her eyes, staring at the screen too long, emanated the crimson light. Her fingers almost became numb except her pointer finger on her right hand that kept clicking Delete button.

It was already four o’clock in the morning. She was still in her tight black dress that was enveloped in her beige trench coat. Mascara that she carefully applied eight hours ago kept stamping her thick and long black eye lashes on her dark circle areas as she blinked her big blue eyes. Her lips have become dry. It was all the more clearly shown through the faded red lipstick that she carefully applied eight hours ago on her lips.

She turned on her computer as soon as she arrived home from dinner with Y, hoping she still saved the email that S had sent a year ago for a profile piece that she was working on.

**** skip ****

J kept clicking “next” button anxiously, searching her desk drawls simultaneously, flipping her old notebooks hoping she wrote down his phone number somewhere in her note by any chance.

‘Shit, why did I even delete his number…’ she murmured; her hands were busy looking through her notes and clicking next button in her laptop.

“He really liked you.”
“He really liked you.”

She kept repeating what Y had told her a few hours ago. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She repeated and repeated the same sentence over and over it now embedded in her mind completely that she felt afraid that she might not be able to erase it.

“He really liked you,” said Y.
“Then, why didn’t he never tell me about it?”

she asked, quickly finishing up a glass of Bordeaux that was freshly poured by Y a minute ago. One glass quickly became two glasses and then four and five, quicker and quicker as time went by. The heavy silence that was carrying her surprise existed in a distance between her and Y.

She carefully and slightly started to move her lips again, her lips that were pressed heavily by the sudden uneasiness that was caused by the surprise.

Untitled.

Chapter1.

September 29, 2007.

“Don’t you think we are too different?” said J, her almond shaped eyes, her big brown eyes fixed at the window, her swollen eyes absorbing the morning sunlight.

“What?” asked, or more precisely shouted K, his husky voice over the phone could have not been huskier, but J could feel K wasn’t caring about what she said as much as he wanted to sound like he was.

“We have nothing in common. Look, I live for sweets, but you hate sweets. You once said you feel nauseous when looking at people eating cakes. And you don’t even drink coffee, and I’m what..a heavy coffee drinker!” J shouted back, for she was, once again, irritated by K’s nonchalance.

“What are you trying to say?” asked K not trying to laugh, which he usually does when he hears J pronouncing L like R, F like P because of her Korea accent. “I don’t know,” hesitated K. “I know we are different. In fact, we are very different. Look, you’re a Korean and I’m an American and sometimes we don’t even understand what we say. But we’ve come this far. The fact that we are too different makes us get along very very well,” said K.

J was quite for a while and hung up the phone without saying much; K stared at his phone thinking – ‘I would never be able to understand this girl ……’

September 30, 2007.

Sunday morning sunshine always exhilarates me; today, even more than usual. As soon as J opened her eyes, she lifted the window up, popped her head out of the window as far as she could and felt the cool autumn breeze.

‘When did it become fall?’

J breezed into a kitchen and made a cup of coffee for herself. She poured the water into the cattle, turned on the stove, and let the water boil. She poured a couple tea spoons of Morning Buzz coffee that she recently purchased at a local coffee shop and as usual, placed the red mug that K once gave her after he learned that J's brain couldn’t function without a cup of morning coffee. K was smart. He wanted J to think of him from the moment she opened her eyes.

As the water boils, emitting the hot steam, she marched into her room and played Nat King Cole’s “I’m in the Mood for Love.” As the small one bed room apartment that was packed with stuff that will define J’s two-year-old life in America was quickly engulfed into the smell of percolating coffee, she went back to the kitchen.

J sipped a cup of coffee and carried herself to the window again. The crisp and clean air gently hugged her face as the leaves rustled and danced and irresistibly fell down and kissed the ground. The fresh scents of Downy softener that the wind was delivering not only purify the smell of the night but washed all the sticky steaming memories of the sticky steaming hot summer.

J couldn’t leave there. The longer she stayed there, the more clearly she felt the change of the season. Fall came so imperceptibly that it made her feel as if she was living unconsciously. J has lived so obliviously that she almost forgot the heart-rending memories of the summer.

The guy, K, who J loved so much, disappeared just like she had assumed he would.

February 16, 2007.

“You have to go to my mentor’s birthday party tonight!” said C, who took English class together with J in their freshmen year and became best friends afterward, almost crying on the phone begging J to be her company.

“Come on, he goes to medical school. What kind of a party do you think nerds will have? It will totally be boring,” said J cuddling her blanket and enveloping her lazy body and soul into it.

“Hey, you’d better come up with a more reasonable excuse. You’ve been isolating yourself enough. You really need to get over that stupid everlasting homesick. Come on! It’s going to be fun!” shouted C.

A couple of hours later, there she was, in front of his door, looking only at him, not anybody else, but K.

‘My heart beat.
My heart beat.

Fast,

and faster,

fastER and FASTER,

loud,

and louder,

loudER and LOUDER.’

J walked into the room. The door has been shut down completely.

And she knew, she knew that she could never go back.