I.
I bring ginger from the old country,
peel it with my mother’s paring knife.
The blade is rusted.
Snow outside lies clean.
Nothing here smells of rot or spice—
just doenjang, a smear of fermented soy,
and glass,
my breath making clouds
on a window that never fogs enough
to hide what I’ve become.

II.
My body kept the score in languages
no one in my family ever learnt.
Bruises faded, but their shadows stayed,
flowering like kulat—rot in quiet bloom—
beneath the ribs.
I learnt to sit small, chew slow,
never interrupt the thunder in a man’s voice.
Shame curled behind my knees—
so I’d never kneel in the wrong direction.
Even my spine learnt to stiffen
at the syllables of my own name.

III.
I grew up where the heat softened everything—
mango skins on the ground, swollen ankles,
even the truth.
Our zinc roof clanged like a signal,
but no one ever came.
Mak called it cubit sayang—
love disguised as a pinch—
when she pinched too hard.
Said girls who answered back
would never marry well.
I learnt to fold my voice into laundry,
hang it up with the bras,
where the wind wouldn’t touch it.

IV.
In Korea, even grief is well-behaved.
The wardrobe holds two coats.
A single jar of kimchi waits in the fridge.
I whisper in English to the tiles,
let the Cuckoo rice cooker exhale for me.
Outside, the world quarrels in traffic—
in drunk ahjussis, in ajummas
flinging words over fish—
but no one yells in our small silence,
this neat square of warmth
where the floor waits like a held breath.
Yet, memory fogs the mirror
when I wash my face,
and I tense at the sound
of a door closing too hard.

V.
Back home, I was all frill and flash—
glitter heels, glass nails,
the smell of salon hair.
Pretty was armour; silence, a skill.
In the Land of the Morning Calm,
I found my missing pieces
on pine-needled trails.
The mugunghwa—Korea’s hibiscus—
never asked me to smile.
Nor did the wind threading through sonamu—
the slow-breathing pines—
or the snow resting its weight without question.
Even in winter, the ginkgo listens.
I touch its yellow leaf like skin
and let it fall without apology.

VI.
I will not mother pain into another girl.
And I refuse to pass down silence
like heirloom gold.
Let the bangles rust.
Release the name.
I’ve packed light on purpose—
left the lace behind, the silver,
the mother’s rules folded in.

What I carry now: rice, ginger,
a clean pillowcase,
my own name said kindly.
I have left the door unlocked—
not for return,
but for air.

VII.
The snow falls like it always does—
indifferent, soft, certain.
I brew solnip-cha—
pine tea from the mountains.
I stay still.
My breath fogs the window,
and no one asks me to wipe it.
Nothing blooms out of season today,
not even me.
But I am here,
and that is enough.