A poet wrote, ‘The boy came to me and released two fish through my neck.1’ The fish swim around me, and every time its tail splashes on my heart, I feel pain and alive. I fall in love easily, so I have so many fish around me, all the forgotten fish, forgotten tears, forgotten emotions.
And I make a soup out of them from time to time. I make it very spicy and eat it while it’s still hot, blowing breath ho-ho on it. Things that were once splash around the heart, slipping down to the stomach to make me warm and become energy.
- “The boy grabbed my neck-sleeve and put a fish in. / My heart became two white trout. / I swam through the blue water, following a school of three fish.” (Jin Eun-young, First love, from A Dictionary Composed of Seven Words (2003).) ↩︎
singerjung 