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Hello is an alteration of Hallo or Hollo from Old High German Halâ or Holâ, used to hail a ferryman.
If her letters could go to sleep, my translations would be their dreams. The letters transport my mother to wherever I reside, so they may, in her place, become a constant dispensation of love.
Forty-nine letters were discovered after an unknowable number had been trashed or forgotten. In Buddhist tradition, forty-nine is the number of days a soul wanders the earth for answers before the afterlife.
Through their doors, their bedsheets moved like there was a whale under there. My father rolled over and cursed. Her hair, then her hand appeared. If I had never seen my mother and father hurt each other, I might never have known how they loved each other.
They discussed the offer over sliced fruit, chewing seriously on yellow-ringed melons.
cylindrical
she loved, in a hole a foot or two under the rightmost
Then I looked up at the oak tree, and there, a hundred birds came flying in on their fullest wingspan.
If you have no suffering, you have no story to tell—isn’t it true?”
When you’re having a hard time, tell somebody. If you want to throw a tantrum, you should try it.
One must not resist being forced together just as one must not hesitate when parting.
Kumiko preferred the wildness of the islanders. Their faces showed the contempt of empty nets. Their eyes cut into her. Their slick words and heavy fists. They never let Kumiko wonder where she stood with them. They taught her how to talk over the roar of the sea. They shouted at her, kissed her, scolded her, praised her, and the whole island, together, expected the world of her—to see, to know, and to provide.
Her grave was cleared of weeds pulled by the workers she had greeted herself the previous year.
I learned to isolate myself through language—from English to Korean to Japanese. It was so effective it was frightening, as if I could guard against others like a spy.
Languages, as they open you, can also allow you to close. When I felt myself running toward seclusion, I heard my grandmother and my great-grandfather urging me to try—and how much harder one must try when learning to love. She never asked me to speak but to understand, rather than endure to forgive, and never to sacrifice, only to let go. 11 Hello?
maybe I thought it was beautiful, the soft earth of that country, the sea breeze like sweet vinegar to soothe bitterness from my life because what harmed me did not appear to endanger the foggy trees, our sesame-oiled tongs, our coolheaded smiles; like how it was my fault that I had cleaned out Mieko’s cage thinking it was one more burden; and how it was I who made my parents and my grandmother believe I never heard them and it was I who could not forgive anyone or I who did not try to get away from where I was and it was I who had put myself inside a room such as this.
“If you want to be a good poet, then write poetry. If you want to be a great poet, then translate.”
My cabin smelled of coffee and cigarettes. It was disarranged with notecards, papers, boards, and a dictionary. There were fingerprints over the piano keys. The rocking chair, positioned askew.
As the door closed behind me, I flooded with tears unlike ever before, not even during childhood. I let myself cry for no reason through the night, and for those many nights long ago.
“My parents didn’t give me happiness,” I said. “But they set me free. They gave me freedom.”
She earned her MFA in Literary Translation and Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is completing the PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle.
