For Brenda McMillan and Myong Myers
The ache to die in the place that She had lived
began in her feet,
this yearning for crossing a threshold
that She could call her own.
And her feet bore the ache down
deep as She walked through life
searching for a place to die.
But this place could not be the
land in which She was born for
restless feet had carried her from post-war
Korea, fatherless and therefore nameless,
a might-as-well-have-never-been-born existence,
on child-sized feet that bore witness to
moving spaces to which She had
no connection.
And when the sky finally fell under the
heavy hand of a cruel uncle and loveless
stepfather, her bare feet swept
She and her younger sister along
suspiciously shifting mountain roads seemingly
filled with growling horangi—tigers—to stand on
a train platform to Seoul
singing songs for candy
and sleeping on benches,
trusting the kindness of passing strangers to
get them on the right rain to
somewhere-other-than-here.
But her sister’s feet did not bear the
same kind of aching and so
retraced footprints in retreat with
an exhaling breath reserved for
a resigned return to the only
place the sister had ever known.
And since She could not call this home,
She let her sister go and
kept moving forward, ever yearning—
“I want to die in the place that I have lived”—
But knowing She had not yet lived,
her naked feet bore her across a fluid earth,
seeking refuge in solid ground that
her feet could root into.
And it was this primal connection to the land
that made her feet thirsty
and, therefore, impatient.
So they clung to the first bit of rocky
ground to stretch underfoot and
being tired and lacking the restless
defiant spirit She once had,
She relented to her aching feet and
set down roots in this cold soil,
almost barren of water and light.
Yet She willed herself to stretch upward and
outward and a home grew from her fingertips,
and beneath the encircling canopy of her arms,
a dandelion daughter and
a dandelion son
managed to spring from the precarious
soil and while the seasons came and left,
the winds ever relentlessly
pushed and moved the dry
unreliable dirt around her,
exposing her
aging
brittle
malnourished and
long-forgotten
feet.
When the dandelion daughter
and son bore witness to this,
they cried salty tears that only
made her feet more root bound.
And as the winds howled heartlessly
around them, the dandelion son
and daughter tried to dig her out but soon
understood her feet had become too
firmly planted and She would only
leave this place if She were
ripped out or
cut away.
So in the time they had left,
they messaged her aching feet as best
they could until the winds became too
powerful and the dandelion son blew
away on wispy seeds that wandered
aimlessly on precocious air currents.
The dandelion daughter watched her brother until
he was out of sight then turned and
pleaded with She in desperation:
“Please just pull up your feet and walk away!”
But even as She heard her dandelion
daughter’s words and felt the land beneath
her crumbling away from her aching feet,
She only knew what She had always known—
“I want to die in the place that I have lived”—
and with that whisper She blew
her dandelion daughter away with
the hopeful wish that wispy seeds would
find firm footing on solid ground
somewhere-other-than-here.