Just Another Song

HAYUN CHO

Animal migrations always seem full of grace.

Small bodies moving in one direction,

Even if it means they won’t come back.

Like my parents, I crave return.

The smell of a cellar, or the way

She wore denim skirts.

A rain that does not wash or flood,

But sticks to skin like another skin.

The new metro, now the old metro.

Come back. I think I live to hear that.

You loved in a place that knew the wild nature

Of that love, and that place is calling you back.

I could write about watching geese,

Like silver, cutting through evening.

Or ants preparing for a storm.

I light the lamp because I have to.

Another light has gone out of that part of my life.

In the clearing, high up in a nameless mountain,

A nameless girl eats strawberries.

It is August. There are no airplanes.

The rain has started.

She does not need a country

To know the touch of rain.

I write it shamelessly—I.

I was the nameless girl.

I rode on an airplane and left.

This is simply what they do not tell you.

Here is my instinct on the page, my animal skin,

And it speaks of somewhere else.

It is neither good nor bad,

And it hasn’t left.

It wanted me to come back,

So I opened the door.