LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 
Author Bio 작가 소개
Kim Un
I Don't Know Where the Leak Has Sprung
I opened the bathroom door and you were crying inside. Bent double as you cried sitting on the toilet. Why are you crying,
I almost asked. You wouldn’t have answered, anyway. Still, why are you crying,
I almost asked and didn’t, again. Because it was useless. Whatever the reason, and whomever the tears were for,
a crying person is a crying person. An overflowing person. To ask a question to stop the flow is already too late.
Until the crying ceases or the tears are stopped
or waiting for the tears to dry, I stare into the bathroom.
I stare at you. Thankfully, the bathroom lacks the tiniest window.
Nowhere for cries to leak to the outside.
No outer wall for tear tracks to stain.
A cloud that would’ve been visible had there been a bathroom window passes outside the living room window.
Watching it stopped me in my tracks and made me forget you’re crying.
How to console you? How to stop the cloud?
I am an other. A loving other. A hating other. A stranger other.
A cloud flowing whichever way and an other of this morning stopped in his tracks.
The single other who would’ve been enough has now stopped the other
who would’ve overwhelmed even two. In front of the bathroom, I hold in the cloud.
I feel something flowing down like water. I don’t know where the leak has sprung.
The Sadness of a Single Cup
Thinking of a single cup brings out its sadness. Even a sadness once glimpsed and forgotten. The sadness is held within it. A single cup’s beaded condensation is sadly rounded and flows in an attitude of sadness and becomes the final days of sadness and evaporates and encrusts and the single cup is alone and the single cup is ridiculously a single cup regardless of what it’s made of a single cup’s shape and attitude and temper are held in a pillar of sadness in a well of sadness in the wrong words of sadness in the wrongly named sadness continuing to answer yes yes like an answering machine of sadness as it sits. There is a single cup. There may be two there may be three but the cup is a cup and the sadness is not brought out. Better it’s not brought out almost as the overflowing sadness is poured into one cup then two cups then by the third it is like a bomb mixed with this and that accompanied by dizziness and it wouldn’t be surprising if there was a drop because of this use of a single cup which continues to be sad. A thing that sits for the sake of continuing to be sad. How else would I remain seated when I should’ve fallen long ago. I sit to empty myself. The cup exists to keep pouring into.
by Kim Un
Translated by Anton Hur
Writer 필자 소개
Kim Un
Translator 번역가 소개
Anton Hur
Did you enjoy this article? 별점
Did you enjoy this article? Please rate your experience
More From Issue Vol.60 Summer 2023
More Content Like This
