Stories of you started out like any other, like winding roads to ancient villages. Abrupt turns, uphill and downhill, thickets of brush, unpaved but only the one way. We could only end up together. But now I remember you only in fragments. Of memories that pierce and slit, that have now lost their context and only mirror back images and sentiments.
The frost through which our breaths materialized like giggles. The white thick-knit scarf that I let you borrow when you looked so cold. The notes we exchanged in class, written on the corners we tore from notebooks. The late-night bus rides home through the quiet suburbs of Seoul. The clumsy first-kiss on the playground at my apartment complex. The cold night that blessed us under the spotlight of the lamppost.
Then come those memories of questions. Are you considering getting double eyelid surgery? Why don’t you get the moles on your face surgically removed? You know, for when you start looking for jobs? Your big calves, they mean you have a strong stance, don't they? How did you turn my body into a set of questions? My life into an essay with red revision marks slashed across the page?
Then there were also those other shards of memory. Of having my shirt pulled off. Of wondering how to enjoy your touches. Of telling you to stop when you started tugging at my pants. Of being met with eyes filled with disbelief. Or was it annoyance? Of hearing from a mutual friend how I treated you like a rapist. Of hearing from this same friend how you told everyone it was just spam, when actually it was me calling you because it was our 100th day together. Of being notified by text message, that it was all over.
A string of memories, with no narrative arc. They haunt in little bites, like the last cold snap of the year before the spring flowers bloom in bursts of color. Chipping away at my heart, leaving me wondering if I’ll ever recover. But eventually, the shards lose their sharp edges as does the winter frost.Â
These fragments are strewn across the floor of my mind, and they form my memory of you.
Seon-Myung Yoo is an emerging writer whose work has been featured in Luminis, Ewha Womans University’s Writing Club Magazine, and in Three Wise Monkeys, an online expat magazine in Korea. She is also a recipient of the COVID-19 Micro-Grants in the Arts & Humanities from The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University for a creative nonfiction project. She is also a PhD candidate in English at Texas A&M University and a composition teacher at Blinn College.
Love the ache conveyed in this story. Very relatable.