Nowhere to Be Found

by Bae Suah

Tired. I was tired. I was only twenty-four, but I was tired.

Even now I think maybe my family is just a random collection of people I knew long ago and will never happen upon again, and people I don’t know yet but will meet by chance one day.

We were too far apart in age to really feel like sisters, and we hadn’t had much opportunity to spend time together as we were growing up. We’d never shared a room or liked the same boy or fought over a pair of lacy underwear; instead we lived our lives barely aware of each other’s existence.

He just looked blank sometimes. While everyone else was tormented by a restless anxiety, like the dizziness you feel on a spring day, which made them question what they were doing with their lives, Cheolsu was yawning and working on a crossword puzzle. He knew how to accept the tedium without the ennui.

And he always ended with the same words: I’m not really sure.

When I press my ear to your chest, I hear only wind and emptiness.”

I’ll cry out in the end and weep for fear of leaving this world without ever once discovering the me inside me,

Every time winter rolls around I find myself longing for things. A warm home. A heavy blanket. A wool sweater. A soft, light winter coat (that I can’t afford). A kind word when times are tough. White snow falling on this dirty city. Stepping into a phone booth set in the middle of a street like a stage prop.

A secret phone number in my hand that I can call at that very moment. The snowy night so quiet it seems to be holding its breath. Listening to “Stairway to Heaven” on repeat while waiting for a bus that never comes because the snow is falling too heavily and the traffic has come to a standstill.

Where did it come from? Was it real? This sadness that crept up and cut through all of my routines and my boredom and my repetition and my drama, like a sliver of glass piercing my flesh and sticking in the soles of my feet?

Rain falls on the corpses of time.

They were never anything more than who they were. Third person random.