i. nail-clipping crescent moons fall from my silver clipper with faint clicks, building a pyre on warm ondol floorboards. across the room grandma catches the small sound from a waterfall of english listening exercises buzzing from her radio. your nail so thin. why don’t you eat your vitamin? as she rises from the unfinished red sweater she’s knitting for me, i catch the flap of her wrinkled skirt, the ghost of mothballs and garden dirt. when she returns with a glass of milk and five vitamins nestled on a plastic preschool plate, i refuse. it’s fine. ii. five on may 10 at five a.m., when white flower petals descend and grandma awakens, it’s our birthday. grandma endures oil splashes while frying seafood pancakes, frothing a tomato yakult smoothie. she embarks on the fifty-five minute bus ride to my seoul apartment. before gangnam-gu, dogokdong, grandma makes her way through the crowd of seoulites. the tornado of youngsters surrounds her when she falls from the bus steps to the street. honking horns & ambulance sirens & the shouting bus driver & red unspooling on the ground. iii. red winter returns & it’s time to clip my fingernails again. i sit on the same ondol floor where the milky-colored nails trickle like tears. i wish i hadn’t wanted good food for my birthday. i wish i had taken the vitamins & corrected her english when she asked me for help. it’s the day of grandma’s surgery & i clip my nails too far down. blood brings good luck, she said. i hold grandma’s needle and stitch the sweater into a blanket for her legs, her oil-stained skirt.
Erin Kim is a senior at Phillips Academy Andover from Kirkland, Washington. Her work has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Princeton University, Columbia College Chicago, Smith College, Hollins University, the Boston Youth Poet Laureate Program, the Library of Congress, and The New York Times Learning Network. Currently, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of Andover’s yearbook, Pot Pourri, and as Managing Editor of Andover’s student-run newspaper, The Phillipian.
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