Confessions of a boy

Those were days of struggle ; each leaf added to the tree. I waited each night, outside the trembling hut, waiting to see a lonely traveller in need of food or accommodation. “A man can sleep outside”, I remembered my mother’s voice when I initially started sleeping out, shaking and screaming at night in fear. That me doesn’t exist anymore. Of course, that mother too. Living alone, I had to fend for myself alone, but living-in all my life, I didn’t know the kind of work other men did. All I knew was to take care of the house and surroundings, to weave baskets out of wires, and to knit baby clothes. “What woman would like you?” my old mother would ask during her last days. I’d sit there like a good daughter-in-law, listening to the taunts at her husband’s home. Sadly, they expected me to bring a wife home. How do I tell them, that I’d rather be married off?

To My White Knight

Dedicated to Joonie (Joon), my lovely cat-friend, My White Knight. 

Under another sky

Where crabs fly

And dreams take no wings

I’ll come rolling

On to the meadow

To find you strolling

On a lazy every-day-afternoon.

Fishes and feathers everywhere

For you to play and fight with.

They, who were waiting

For their brother,

From a faraway Night.

You closed your eyes on me

As the pains embraced you.

I embraced your dying body,

Listened to your last heartbeats,

As I poured the last drops of water

You’ll ever have,

A drop of crystalline universe,

In your eyes, formed.

And then the warmth left you;

Your body, a numb monument

Of our memories together.

As I handed you over

To the Other World,

I let myself fall

And rise again.

I thought words were all that I had

But you taught me they were not enough

To bid you goodbye.

– In Memory of My White Knight. 

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