Short Nonfiction
Woman
I told her she was the perfect mom. This was when she tried to pull the tubes from her arms the gloves from her hands. One of the nurses said, “Oh, she’s a fighter.”
Given Light and a Mother Who Was Always Dying in Secret
No one remembers her mother right or observes the rites to keep her whole. The woman becomes fragments, patches for quilts, and the daughter loses the needle, what North should have drawn from her hand and pinned where she could always find it.
The Day You Were Dying
I ate lunch looking out at the struggling town and remembered the day your son and I showed up unannounced on your doorstep and shared our news, and how you invited the nearest relatives to celebrate our engagement with burritos and Pepsi in your formal dining room, our paper-wrapped meal eaten over a crocheted lace tablecloth.
Pink Balloon
To my mind, I am looking at a snapshot of myself and my dad at the same age. I remember then thinking how my father, a carpenter by trade, could fix anything, and maybe a decade or so later, how he seemed to break everything. When caring for animals, it’s straightforward: be gentle with them, be firm when necessary but never hurt them.
Hazy Skies
Where I am living now, the seasons have no pivot... Springs are mercurial, senselessly violent in their cold and snow. I experience winter here like a death, wait endlessly for a green that will outgrow my grief.
How to Be Divorced
Your sister who has gone through her own divorce not long ago and still was able to show up and walk alongside the whole time. You look at her struggle, her transformation, her healing. You study it, not wanting to miss anything.
Letters To You
Dear Grandma, One day, I came home from school, and you were just gone. Mom said it was because you missed Grandpa and you missed Korea. I knew better. You left because you were fed up with me, fed up with trying to teach Korean to a granddaughter who kept refusing it.
Letter from 1996: Rembrandt and Winter on a Turkish Peninsula
I am here to read, write, and draw. I am here to find solace, a new center, to torture myself in the wake of a failed marriage. I am here to avoid anyone who might perceive my heart is broken. To hide. When the sun comes out, I walk by the sea.
+THE WAKING: Ruminate Online
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