What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.
Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles.
- Richard Siken
You are used to sleeping in a sprawl of limbs, draped across a chair. Curled up against the oil-slick of a car window. Sleeping, really, not at all. Ready to fight, to spring.
Nightmares are second nature.
By her side, you don't even dream.
In golden morning, when even the city is nearly silent, you lift away her hair and press your lips to the soft hollow just behind her ear.
She murmurs, "Just another minute," and you would take her at her word. You would.
The world isn't going to end itself. That's where you come in. Knives and smiles have much in common; it's easier to tailor a suit than an argument.
You favor both.
And yes, you laugh and you love, because that is what your mother taught you. You grow up and you don't forget her. You draw first blood and first smile in every fight, and sometimes you drink so much soju that the blur in your eyes doesn't have to be from tears.
In between years that build together, you watch the girl who grows up beautiful and brave.
(She makes you dream.)
They took your uncle from you but you swear they won't have her. You swear it through a bleeding wound and a pounding ache in your head, through handcuffs and hospital beds. You love her, you love her. Your uncle told you that you should, but that it would mean leaving everything else behind.
As for Jae-yi, she doesn't pretend that it is anything wise or studied, only that it is.
She saves you and she kisses you and you kiss her back, you kiss her hands and you love her, and they took your uncle from you but you swear they won't have her.
Her mother rises from the dead; yours doesn't.
Her mother asks you to let Jae-yi go. You want to say words that don't belong to a bloody-fisted man like you, words like, you would be better off asking me to let go of my own heart.
But you do it.
Trust is a fragile thing. You have always treated your body like a weapon, your mind like a weapon, and your heart like nothing at all. Still, it breathed and beat. Hearts are fragile things.
Jae-yi says she'll never forgive you.
And of course, neither will you. Not the son who watched his mother gasp for life; not the nephew whose tattered hands could not hold on tight enough. Not the thug, not the advocate. You are all these things, and none of them were enough.
She used to look at you like you had saved her, like you were all that she had left.
You would have taken her at word. You would.
(But the world wasn't going to end itself.)