kara's birthday

and then there was rain...





happy birthday kara!

by request: han

my mother released me from her womb with a heavy sigh
surgical lights illuminated small knots of blood and placenta
the doctors sawed me in two upon sight
shipped one half of me overseas
and flung the last slab of body at my mother

twenty years later i still delicately finger the stitches
grow disgusted, tear open sutures,
paralyzed at the possibility of releasing these scars

koreans call this han
lament
grief
isolation
vengeance
the grandest combination of words is futile
every time i stretch my hand out to the core
it shifts shape evades my grasp turns to smoke

han resonates upon the explosion of mental landmines
historical debris ricochets inside the walls of my skin
scores of independence movements scribbled in our blood
but we've never been free
traded from one sphere of imperialism to another and
another and
another
we are now split, shared
our bodies, disassembled constellations along the 38th parallel
dmz / demilitarized zone
red tendons peeking from vacant limbs like crab meat
our bare ribs smiling, to a glowing hole in the sky called hope

while the resentment hardens inside my chest
slick obsidian replaces blood
i shatter
into a thousand pieces
and come together only to feel out familial scabs
searching for words to record this insufferable ringing locked inside me
our cries are the echolocation of festering wounds that will never heal
writhing, struggling for air that i was never meant to breathe

i am the daughter of grocery store revolutionaries
with the romanticized destiny to be tied in my place
to suffer in silence
but agony bursts through my eyes and drowns every shred of light
even if you ripped out my tongue like a weed
snapped arteries dangling like fresh roots
dripping juice
used them as ribbon to lace my lips shut
i will never be silent

my body lies over the ocean
my body lies over the sea
my body lies over the dmz

bring my body back to me
bring our bodies back to us
strip the mud of our skulls and the crucifixes from our walls
hang up the bones of those who died
in the name of someone else's country so we can pray to something real

we speak of revolutions we know we won't live to see
but we will never stop fighting

#1

Robin
Why are you so negative?
Robin
You shoot your mouth off
Robin
You take shit too personally
Why can’t you just buck up
Grow a sac
Stop being so sensitive

I’m tired of explaining myself
To strangers who refer to themselves as
Family, when they were self-proclaimed
Friends, when they’ve broken the rope one too many times
I know you only care when you have to

Every time an individual strikes a match to my behavior
The tide in my entire body begins to rise
Nervous system goes into overdrive
Synapses snap crackle and pop back and forth
Explanations, marinating in 20 years of stomach
More acidic than ever
Reluctantly resurface
Stronger than ever
They ride the rising sea as it burns
Through physiological landscape
We always have to go to war every time
I know you only care when you have to

I’m tired of them telling me to thicken my skin
Don’t you know I’m without filter
Walking the earth in my own flesh and blood
Which is a lot more than I can say about anyone else
I’m tired of them telling me to thicken my skin
When the color of it has already caused me enough problems
The way I see it
Underneath we are all flesh and blood
I want to be flesh and blood
I want you to know how my body functions
How the tide rises
Where red wire tendons exhale from exhaustion
Where circulatory tubes are clogged with plaque
I want you to see where I’m wounded
Where I’m bleeding
Then you wouldn’t have to ask all these questions
In the name of strengthening friendships
But I know you only care when you have to

I'm tired of turning myself into an anatomical diagram
I'm tired of making myself easy to read and accessible
I am not your science project

They say
We came from the stars
I want to be flesh and blood
Bare red like the sun
No one questions the sun
And why it burns so brightly

bnv

was insane!

sneak preview of a piece to come

he begins to circle me
a shark sniffing for blood
and i was born with a wound between my legs