my fingers grasp at the ends of the book,

bringing it closer until i smell  

ground wood and dusty vanilla.

my mom held this one in her arms yesterday.

as she slept, the pages fanned across her chest

like a baby’s embrace--the native language of

a home she left decades ago cradled softly

against the fabric of her american clothes.

on special nights, when she reads to me 

i close my eyes, letting 

the inflections in her voice carry me

to colorful street markets half a globe away,

acting like 

i’m in the heart of seoul.

acting like

my mother’s tongue is my mother tongue.

these korean books are the only tickets i can afford

to travel back to a home i don’t remember.

now i sit alone and analyze the letters 

in front of me, squinting at each line and curve

and arranging their sounds the way

one arranges puzzle pieces. 

i slosh the words around my mouth softly,

slowly, i taste the way they

trickle out from my lips. like tap water-

but tainted brown with the residue of my 

American Accent. 

leaking and restrained, the stream of syllables 

struggle to  s te ad y, stu-mble 

so far off course that i don’t know what i’m 

saying, i don’t know what i’m hearing.

this is not the korea that’s home. 

somewhere my eyes lost their path and 

my throat is parched dry and 

i despise that i’m feeling

foreign.