06.25.2022

Umma understands one out of three of my poems. This is why she declares I sound like a poet. I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her before I gave up on art, small girl of ten brimming with precious audacity not yet oxidized by sharp gust of outside air; recited Jabberwocky in a basement, sang Maya Angelou over the counter of an addressless existence. As long as we had no house, I could not be contained. But I gave up on art when I got my first room, blunt molasses space concretizer of reality, snuffer of dreams. Word became flesh and I hated mine, blunt molasses block of pound. What words could soften the thud of me hitting air?

But now Umma understands one out of three of my poems. I explain the other two over the phone. She says, your grandmother loved poems. She would not understand yours. But she would believe them possible.

06.20.2022

You learned piano until the day you could no longer play. We watched you at your funeral. Your fingers pressed on the keys in thirds in fifths in chords you never had the chance to learn in childhood so you learned them decades later in Los Angeles until you could no longer get out of bed unassisted, which was when we flew over from our green coast of morning dew and deciduous seasons to the place I dreaded visiting every year in middle and high school. I hated how everyone who looked like me, who was supposed to want me, looked at me like I wasn’t supposed to be here because what are you we don’t want you, but I came, grandma, I came for you.

I wonder how many people at the funeral understood that, as you approached death, you became the girl who had been taken from you circumstance after circumstance, and through each movement of a finger, you were winning her back dream after dream until your last breath. I think we did. Three grandchildren side by side, we sobbed and sobbed. My fingers felt your chords. When I play them now, they are ours.

Grandma, do you know that I don’t hate California anymore? I don’t hate anyone or anything anymore. I am in love. It makes me cry. A lesson no one can teach you but God. Umma told me that you prayed for me every night of senior year, and knowing that I’m sure you prayed for me every night before and after too. You prayed I would smile. You prayed the world would give me reason to laugh. You were afraid it was too late. You were afraid it was your fault. You were so relieved when you moved in with us and heard me talking, loudly, hands waving. You were so relieved that I had a voice and I was using it. I think this is true so I trust that it is. I trust that your message got through.

We watched you tell your church that your one regret was not loving your grandchildren enough. When I heard this I cried. The cruelty of diaspora, that we can drown until the end never knowing. I will never know how you loved me. You will never know that I know. A lesson no one can teach you but God.

08.04.2021

Halmeoni’s life, said my father, is her business.

To know that, I think, is to give her the most dignity.

-Karis Ryu

Karis Ryu is a writer, artist, and graduate student currently based in New Haven, Connecticut. She grew up moving frequently across North America and the Pacific as a U.S. military child of Korean descent. Her work has previously appeared in The B'K, Zindabad, Harpy Hybrid Review, and other publications. Find her at karisryu.com