lacuna

i borrow my mother’s sadness tonight &
distort it over me like it will replace the
history. the god of my childhood is jaundiced,
a silverfished body in the attic. the house
i grew up in—soft & muffled, cinnamon
-colored. here is where i broke my arm, here
is canary that died nine years ago,
here are the footsteps that ran up the stairs
in the kitchen light & here is where it hurt the
most. the pathways i stopped remembering,
the ones that reached a terminal velocity.
haunted houses lack a sense of legibility, which
is to say, humans are incapable of
recognizing a dead thing. i scythe the lupine
leftovers of my body. i sing fake elegies for
the asleep. the air textures itself with the
quietest violence & just because i bled here
doesn’t make this room a holy space. just
because i tried to build an altar doesn’t
mean this city is jerusalem.

By Eunice Kim

Biography:

Eunice Kim is a Korean-American writer living in Seoul. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Polyphony, The Heritage Review, Vagabond City Lit, and more. She currently works as a staff reader for The Adroit Journal and a volunteer writer for Her Culture.