A Summer Love Story, Jiyoung Jeong

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2021

A Summer Love Story

Jiyoung Jeong

Five weeks after we met two weeks after we’d begun living together, in heaving heat, he walked me to the train station. We saw the Acropolis along the way, the ruin cliffed in high sky. He carried my backpack, my five weeks humped behind his shoulders. At a crossroad he peeled his hand from mine and gave me

a paper bag — What is this, I’d asked, and he said, as if he would every day for many years, for when you get hungry. Honey sandwich and apple. We passed narrow train tracks, where trains sometimes came, ducked station turnstiles that have not worked in months. We sat in silence

and when my train came, air splattered against me like paint. We turned to each other, he pressed my head into his wet chest, my heart between his stomach and his hand. I think I’ve said all I want to say, he said and

into his chest I told him, he who had said he did not love me, I love you

through the window I saw him, standing, the train moved, I went back to not knowing him, what we grew emptying,

mile by mile.