ON MOTHERLAND

The ocean has two eyes and they look like my grandfather’s. Hardened, ongoing; all things return to the sea. We spread his ashes in Jersey, in Carolina, where the waves beckon, hands outstretched, reaching for the sky. I stand on its edge, waves over my skin, and think about how home is not a place I ever knew, or could ever return to. How birth is an act of violence and my motherland has blood soaked into her skin. How I don’t have a motherland, but everywhere I tread is red, metallic.

I left the womb with wounds on my skin, and blood, and grief in my bones.

I’ve always loved the way waves make me feel endless, like I’m filling the space between sound and silence. Doesn’t the ocean make us all feel a little hollow? Like someone’s gone and dead, and surely it’s not me, because I’m still here. I can still taste the salt in the air.

I left the womb with Korean eyes, and a million people died so I could arrive, and my grandfather never got to tell me what that means. What it means to be a child of the peninsula, to come from somewhere or someone.

I never got to ask him if the blood in me is tainted because there’s a little white in it. How grief is inherited, and my parents aren’t the starting point. Where does belonging begin or end?

My mother tongue feels foreign to me, but then again, so does every word in my mouth. Love is a language I never learned to speak and so I swallow the salt back into my throat. My country talks about belonging like it’s a birthright, but its hands are stained with blood, the slaughtered, the lost and forgotten and gone. My country is a womb, a knife wound, and when my eyes scan maps for water, all I see is war. And this isn’t even my country, but that is my blood, my inherited blood, seeping into the sand.

As the waves wash it away, I stand on the edge of everything and watch my grandfather return home. Wonder if that’s a place I’ll ever know. I think it must be. These are his eyes, those are his waves. This is his grief, ongoing. All things return to the sea.

A thousand days of sleepless nights, Clinging to a far gone sight. As pale as sky, as dark as ground, Your cold body will soon be found.

It’s taken all your self control, To not slice off your every mole. As tethers strain and wither yet, You’ll die soon, don’t you fret.

You beg and beg and beg and plead, For forgiveness that you will soon need. As red pools on your kitchen floor, None to breathe forevermore.

It’s dark and dark and dark around, Your lungs collapse without a sound. A hiccupped sob breaks from your throat, For all the days you sat and moped.

Early days lead selfish lives, You’ve sacrificed your every pride. There’s nothing left, it’s all to burn, Soon you will have to take your turn.

You’ve loved, you’ve learned, You’ve loved, you’ve lost, For each of these, your spirit crossed. You’ve loved, you’ve stayed, You’ve loved, you’ve changed, Never to be loved again.

Evening Haze