YOUR HANDS BELONG IN FLORIDA

it's painful to think that i am alone, again.

in the airport i miss my niece, obviously.

i miss my mom and dad, my sister patty and glenn.

i miss kimchi smell in the mornings,

sweaty feet at night from the florida humidity,

i miss stories told at the dinner table that i had never known:

your grandfather was a wrestler and went semi-pro;

i once ate raw rice for two weeks straight when i crossed over what is now the demilitarized zone;

my best friend died in philadelphia the day you were born;

now all we talk about is how my grandparents are gone

and that i should quit smoking

instead of the fact that i really will miss the ocean and

the clouds which wisp along across the horizon,

and the sun particular to the south.

i miss listening to songs that i never listened to anywhere else.

i miss the awkward hugs.

i miss warm hands sweaty hands with which i typed early in the morning with so much to write

right now,

i miss having the feeling of missing something,

somewhere,

someone.

THIS WORD WAS A 70+ PT SCRABBLE WORD IN A GAME THAT HAPPENED SOMETIME AND SOMEPLACE: INFINITE

when i approach this man who is very much like myself i may greet him with a 'hello.' i may say, 'how are you.' perhaps, "how's your day" is the best. maybe i offer him a glass of water. i may give him a hug, and i might cry a little bit after. i might ask how she is, if her hair has turned silver metallic. i might simply laugh at the sight of him but not in a degrading way, a laugh of pure joy. i don't know - i could, maybe even for some reason, perhaps if the season is winter and we are stranded on the side of the road in the midst of a blizzard on the outskirts of cold boulder, having to change a flat tire, be upset.

maybe i'd say nothing. just stare. crazy twilight stare.

maybe, just maybe, i'd ask him a random ass question: how many times have you shit today? do you piss in swimming pools? showers? what did you REALLY think of twilight? what do you do when you are alone at home? how many people have you seen die, right in front of your eyes? when you were 24, what did you think was in store for you? has it come true? should i abandon all hope?

one could also easily imagine that i'd immediately suggest, off the bat, minute i see his face, that we play a game of scrabble.

maybe i tell him a story about a memory that he was apart of, but isn't really his; i mean, i was the one who lived it, so it's mine, right? it'd be about a day in september when we were at my sister's home with daly. i'd say dad, remember when we were at sis's (my sister won't let me call her patty) for my birthday awhile back. we ate sushi and talked about tiger woods and golf and graduate school (the only things we ever talk about)? you fell asleep on the couch. i was hanging with daly and she was walking around and then she walked up to you and kind of played with your socks and kept trying to pull them off. classic dad socks, smooth, velvety black socks (i did read/play pat the bunny with daly when i babysat her so she has an affinity for touching). anyway, it made me want to cry. i don't know why but we were all there, three generations of kims." then i'd probably pause because he doesn't really understand english all too well. let him digest the information. "yeah, so, anyway. i just want to tell you that you must want to know what it's like to be a korean in america who got to grow up here. and i want to tell you. but there's too much, just like you probably can't tell me everything about your life. and i imagine that's why we have an unwritten understanding that there is not much to be said. we know what's up, and it's all good, and we appreciate, and know without having to hear any words. all i want to say is you are the patriarch now dad. when grandma and grandpa died, you became the head of the household. and then i look around at everything sis and i have, and now daly, and i have to say, good job old man. and you know, i'm pretty scared to become the head of the household someday; i'm scared of losing you."

i may make him come with me to the corn field back home where my friends and i used to smoke copious amounts of drugs, drink and play guitar under crystalline icy skies in the fall; where i lost my virginity, where i had my first break up, my first kiss. i would make him lay down on a blanket and tilt his head backward to look at the world upside down, to see the sands of stars. i would make him promise to listen to pavement and read william faulkner and my own writing. i would make him talk about sex and drugs and love and heartbreak and holding hands and the most arrogant thoughts and the most debased thoughts he'd ever thought of. i would make him tell me all the thoughts hidden deep down, never even attempted to be put into words, he'd ever had ever in his entire life. i would make him expose himself, answer my questions, my demands to know the truths - to know the truths about me, myself, and who i am.

i would make him, i would make him; i would make him.

FILLMORE JIVE

instead of being up and awake at four in the morning while a monsoon rain rakes against my windowpane, while i rummage through luggage and suitcases filled with album after album of old family photos, i need to sleep. rather than impossibly yearn to go back in time to the precise moment captured in the particular photo i hold in my shaky hands, of my father when he was ten years old, a stone faced boy in a navy blue school uniform with a cold smile sitting on the steps of a temple in North Korea, i need to be comfortable and cozy, dozing off to dream of snacking on Klondike bars and playing guitar in a fort with a golden retriever who smokes cigarettes and plays the bass.

i would like to not be nostalgic – to not have this deep desire to get dirty and dig into the depths of time, to infiltrate history, to be transposed to the precise moment my father prepared for the snapshot and squinted from the flash of the camera. i cannot help it though; i want to know him then, know what he thought of when he woke up and felt a chilly breeze blow in from the window, when he would dip his legs into a cool lake on a summer day, when he laid on dewy grass in the morning staring up into the clouds. i want to have known him before he gave me a name, before, on lonely days, i would drive in the snow on the back-roads of Ohio forgetting to relish in the beauty of winter because the darkness of my mind put me in a slumber; before i read a poem that told me that we learn the most from what's fallen. he would not have known then, in that moment in 1953, as boundaries were drawn across the land, that one day i would figure out that all life is is an imprint on my brain of a hummingbird who came by to say hello as i rainbow-watched and smoked a cigarette; that would have been before another day of gray sky, when i would happen upon a couple of teary-eyed folk in embrace kneeling in front of a grave and would find myself in wonder and want to feel and know the depths of their anguish, and the reason for their pain; before i would take long walks along the beach for a good while, a mile or two, thinking of all of the lonely aimless souls who walk as well, wondering under the chandelier of night, asking themselves quietly under their breath, how many children want for the love of someone else?

i'd like to sleep but for some reason i can't, not even when i try to meditate. i will try to sleep soon and want to sleep soon and will give up this fantastic idea of transportation to another time and place because it is impossible to actually time-travel – and if i could, i don’t think i would be able to change anything because if i did the photo would not exist in the same manner in the future, and would not have inspired this insomniac state. so i do not wish to go back, after all; i do not wish to change the past—would not even for the chance to see pavement reunite. i just need to sleep.

but i am writing now, instead of searching, rather than sleeping. i write because to write is to be in a kind of sleep; it is free like a dream; you can write whatever and it all has meaning (or none at all). instead of being awake rummaging through paper memories i will write and it will suffice—it is nearly better than sleep.