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Recording 6

July 17, 2023 - 04:20

The smell of paper screens and half hearted sunbeams. My face buried in your collar and fingers clutched tight against your chest. 

I wish I could stay.

Waking up first, to your sleeping face: gentle wrinkles and wayward curls. Waking up alone, in a house built for many - but now it’s just ours. Waking, to a dreamscape of muted, curling pastel. The curve of my lips imitating the arc of your eyelids, shuddered down in hazy bliss. 

Will this last forever?

It’s the same and it's not. It’s familiar and right but oh so, so wrong. Because you didn’t change and I did. Because I grew and you stayed. Because with you the limbic space remains and it doesn’t have room for me. And, because, I’m here, yeah? Hesitating at the threshold while you reach out. Remembering vaguely when my form was small and you made up the world - This world. Ours. Ours alone, - in a home - in a country - in a life - so far far far…so far from where I am now. But is it even mine now?

I missed you, halmoni.

I missed you…I missed…I miss -

I didn’t sleep in the peaks of night and I’m not sleeping now. You’re thrown so far in static slumber, like you hear lullabies in the bubbling pop. But I know…you’re not awake to know this, and I’ll bring the melody to you. 

Halmoni, do you know me still?

That singular fan whirring desperate air to our cheeks, thick plastic clicking and narrow blades turning. Quickly I’m drowning and it stutters like tears, do you hear my heartbeat by yours? 

And there - 

Stiff paper edged with wood stumbling against metal rails, the clink almost turquoise and gold. Cresting past tides and flicking a tongue through salt - do you know I’m smiling against you? 

And then, 

Lazy blankets whispering together; shush shush shush shush - Drawn in and engulfed, lost and tethered to you. 

And - 

And a symphony muted by graceless, joyful screaming. 

The cicadas don’t sing in tune. 

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Recording 13

July 28, 2023 - 01:14

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you cicadas sound different in America. 

Wouldn’t you, 

Natalie. 

Hmmm. Natalie….

What if I told you that like the way your tongue taps your name in English and hollows it in Korean would be, stripped bare, like the switch in pitch and stuttering flip of a cicada changing its song?

I would tell you, then, that when I go home and leave you, there will be no pulsing background whir. I would tell you, that the same Cryptotympana Atrata and Hyalessa Fuscata outside your window will never exist outside mine. I would tell you, if you ever came to visit; in my country the cicadas never sing. No. They screech in high, mechanic distortion. They blip out in skittering staccato - all sharp crevices and jagged edges. 

The country I live in has only Megatibicen Auletes and Neotibicen Linnei. Wings tinted pale green and carapaces built of jade. They’re green. Green. You don’t understand, do you. Not when you draw back to onyx shells and murky gray wings. Not when you listen daily to a constant thrumming legato and buzzing lilt. Not when I never told you how different it all is here. 

Jung Hyun-ah,

If you ever paid attention, would you hear? Would you hear how fake, how flawed, how jarringly discordant my heartbeat sings? Would you pick up the way I stumble and struggle through a language so effortless to you? Would you see how the sickly green stands out amongst endless ink? Do you know. Do you know. Do you know. That the rhythm of my breath can’t harmonize with yours. That I’m green with envy and green with America. You can admit to me that you know, because I do too. We are not the same breed of cicada, neh Jung-Hyun

and my songs will never be beautiful.

Recording 20:

August 2, 2023 - 03:41 

To Da-gyung and Min-sung, the cousins I’ll never see grow up. 

You won’t know who I am. Because by the time I go back to Korea, if I ever do, the idea of us would have drifted too far down the river. 

You won’t remember that I once held your chubby, sleep-warm softness in my arms, eyes lazily slitted and fingers curled in my shirtsleeves. You won’t remember the evening I grabbed you among the crystal spray of that musical fountain near your home, spinning and laughing and dancing. You won’t remember skipping through that starlight with hopping glints of gossamer, giggling recklessly with the cicadas. And I always knew, that in the end, you wouldn’t remember anything at all 

But I remember. 

I always remember. 

And I wonder, Da-gyung-ah, if you’ll still have those dimples on your upper cheek-bones when you smile. I wonder, Min-sung, if you’ll still wear that blissful expression while you eat. And I wondered once, for a brief, doubtful second, if it was worth it for me to learn. I’ll tell you one day, if you ask - though I hope you never will - that I never regretted learning to know you.

I love you because I want to. Because I’m selfish and want something to hold, some blessed, sacred scrap of memory to draw on late at night. A moment of home, here; to delude myself into thinking I could build something among your singing cicadas, build something that would stay. It won’t, I know, but it was beautiful to think it would. 

But hey, did you know the cicadas you used to love collecting spent around 17 years underground? Patient and waiting and growing before they find the sun. And even if….even if it takes me 17 years to reach you, even if I wait in a country without your humid kiss and blazing heat - I will come back to who you become. 

And when I do, I don’t want your fishing nets and scrambled swimming. I don’t need you to go back and catch the same cicada corpse strung across my neck. We’ll start again, okay? 

We’ll start again and be okay. We’ll reestablish this world of song. We’ll relearn how we fit together. And when the time comes, I’ll offer back what beating flesh remains for you.

Recording 1:

July 1, 2019 - 01:36:54

“Yerin-ah”

“Neh, haraboji?” 

He smiles at me, graceful wrinkles framing the exact same grin, the slice of him I’ve always known. Exactly the same and still so different. 

Because he looks so much more frail now, slender and lined with fragile bones, the hair under the flat tweed cap shot clear through with gray. Because I know what my father told me about haraboji’s failing health and I hear all the whispers about his stomach - can’tdigestanythingneedsinjectionseveryweekdoctorsstilldon’tknowhowtohelphimeatagainnothingwecando

He’s gentle and happy and I’m relieved. 

But he’s sick and fragile and I’m scared. 

Because I’m not coming back for a long time. And deep down, without having spoken the words, without having acknowledged the anxious flutter at the back of my mind - I’m afraid I’ll never see him again. That I’ll mess these last moments up. And I’m absolutely terrified because I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know how to help and I don’t know how to get closer and I - 

And what if I don’t remember this?

This - this last, bittersweet summer in Korea before I go back to my own. These fleeting, final fragments of a home and a heritage and a family I’ll leave behind. 

Haraboji, what do I do? 

Because I don’t know, I don’t know anything. I think I’m drowning and I can’t breathe but still I - 

“Yerin-ah, make sure you always take care of yourself, okay?

Swallowing it down and smiling back. Don’t look too closely I don’t want you to know that I don’t - 

“Neh haraboji, and take care of yourself too.” 

I won’t lose anything. 

Start recording…

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