By Eunsong Kim
Mother says to never remove my clothes. They are what keeps me above.
Mother tells me and I remove them anyway. To bathe in hot water. Our secret, I tell
the girls. We are not of the shades that surround us. We are not of this weight.
Nobody can steal. Nobody steals. Nobody rips my home from me by witchery and riddles.
I believe as others flee.
Nobody tells me he will take me to his house. Nobody knows that I will follow him as he walks ahead, his head never turned to my body. Nobody places me in a small room with cloth to sew new clothes. He tells me by morning that I will love it here. That by morning I could see.
My body can feel every dust, every lie, every particle of this weight. The gravity could change me. It could tear me from the years I’ve learned to live.
I pretend. I pretend to walk around the fields. To care for vegetables I cannot eat. I
bless him with growth and miracles. I give him what he cannot give me.
To him I am selfless, stupid. To him I am a girl who is forgetting her old name in trade for a hermit kingdom. A new love. A new hiding place.
He must hear. When he sleeps I search the house for mother's clothes. I ask for small tools. Needles. Sleeping herbs. Lessons concerning small poisons. He begins to trust my face. He obeys.
Love. I tell him. Is the choice to burn all things of all ages. Bring me all that you have of me so we can make them ghosts of our things. A clear sculpture. Nothing iridescent.
He brings them to me.
I return to her.
At glance it is chaos. He hid us well. She could not see through the mountains. She searched for me. They searched for me. Living there would be the same as living death. Immortality, they explain. Is a fragile bridge made up of birds.
I do not think of him. But I understand he is convincing. He is asking for contracts in languages he does not speak. Traveling outside the mountains. Promising war. He does not believe I fled. He believes I believed in transparency.
He is convincing. Immortality, he proclaims, can be built by you and you. And you and you. And they build it for him. They build him a bridge on the brightest day of the year against the rain. For us. For Nobody who has learned to steal.
My days work by leads by ceremony. It is natural I meet him. I tell myself that I love him as gravity lets me. From below.
Mother tells me and I remove them anyway. To bathe in hot water. Our secret, I tell
the girls. We are not of the shades that surround us. We are not of this weight.
Nobody can steal. Nobody steals. Nobody rips my home from me by witchery and riddles.
I believe as others flee.
Nobody tells me he will take me to his house. Nobody knows that I will follow him as he walks ahead, his head never turned to my body. Nobody places me in a small room with cloth to sew new clothes. He tells me by morning that I will love it here. That by morning I could see.
My body can feel every dust, every lie, every particle of this weight. The gravity could change me. It could tear me from the years I’ve learned to live.
I pretend. I pretend to walk around the fields. To care for vegetables I cannot eat. I
bless him with growth and miracles. I give him what he cannot give me.
To him I am selfless, stupid. To him I am a girl who is forgetting her old name in trade for a hermit kingdom. A new love. A new hiding place.
He must hear. When he sleeps I search the house for mother's clothes. I ask for small tools. Needles. Sleeping herbs. Lessons concerning small poisons. He begins to trust my face. He obeys.
Love. I tell him. Is the choice to burn all things of all ages. Bring me all that you have of me so we can make them ghosts of our things. A clear sculpture. Nothing iridescent.
He brings them to me.
I return to her.
At glance it is chaos. He hid us well. She could not see through the mountains. She searched for me. They searched for me. Living there would be the same as living death. Immortality, they explain. Is a fragile bridge made up of birds.
I do not think of him. But I understand he is convincing. He is asking for contracts in languages he does not speak. Traveling outside the mountains. Promising war. He does not believe I fled. He believes I believed in transparency.
He is convincing. Immortality, he proclaims, can be built by you and you. And you and you. And they build it for him. They build him a bridge on the brightest day of the year against the rain. For us. For Nobody who has learned to steal.
My days work by leads by ceremony. It is natural I meet him. I tell myself that I love him as gravity lets me. From below.
Eunsong Kim believes these stories are awesome.
