Nowhere to Be Found

by Bae Suah

Most of the people I knew long ago now live their lives without me, and those whom I will meet by chance one day do not know me now.

That was what he’d wanted so badly? Boys were so strange.

Burn me. Pour gasoline over me and set my body on fire. Burn me at the stake like a witch. Wrap me in garbage bags and toss me in the incinerator. I’ll turn into dioxin and make my way into your lungs. Stroke my face lightly with a razor blade and suck the blood that comes seeping out. Lap it up like a cat. I want to be covered in blood. I’ll cry out in the end and weep for fear of leaving this world without ever once discovering the me inside me, the ugly something inside me.

But leave your voice behind; when I come back to this place a hundred years from now, the moment I open the door a colony of bats and your voice will greet me.”

Winter is already here. 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.

Human beings are capable of becoming perfectly pure at some moment in their lives. It doesn’t matter if they’re royalty or literati, middle class, working class, or the lowest class. For many people that moment must be the moment when they are clasping hands with each other. Memory finds its way back through blood, through body heat. Right at that moment.

What was real and what was fantasy? And what was it that I really wanted—reality or fantasy?

If I never saw him again after that day, I would think of him a hundred years from now.

I don’t know why anyone would throw their whole body and soul into something so pointless.

There’s got to be something completely different out there—not just what our eyes can see.

“It’ll be different this time.” She never lost hope.

Don’t you get it? These days, if you’re not one of those people, then no one cares.”

They were never anything more than who they were.

Sometimes it was for work, and sometimes it was a wrong number, and sometimes it was a friend whose name I called out, and sometimes it was someone I wanted to get to know better.

Time pushes away that which is intended, rejects that which is rejected, forgets that which is sung about, and is filled with that which it turns its eyes from, such as the white hairs of a loved one.

Burn me. Pour gasoline over me and set my body on fire. Burn me at the stake like a witch. Wrap me in garbage bags and toss me in the incinerator. I’ll turn into dioxin and make my way into your lungs. Stroke my face lightly with a razor blade and suck the blood that comes seeping out.

The whole world has quieted down because of the rain.