The Lost Children of Korea
Lauren Park(박동영, 핌블레이디스칼리지 9학년)
Let’s go on an adventure,
They told us:
An isle with pools of fire,
(Gods’ warnings,
Gods’ welcoming)
Misty, dark tracks
The soil cut with ash,
Remains of eruptions past.
You’ll be safe, they told us:
It’s dormant.
Relieved to be out of
tan brown blazers, we made our own uniform:
red converses, ocean blue denim, Ralph Lauren
polo with the horse, un-stabled, on lime green.
Our parent’s wave from the Wharf
(happy for us, but happy to be rid of us).
A scaled down Titanic,
Bleached whiteness
with its name neatly printed?
Sewol. It means ‘the passing of time’,
They told us.
Time passed.
When the water seeped through
windows and the doors,
we keep fear at bay with play:
the boys threw life jackets as a dark prank.
Soon practical jokes gave way to practical necessity.
We couldn’t breathe: choking and floating in one move,
Water displaced air, ended sight, doubled weight.
Stay on the ship, they told us.
The crew left for safety.
Rescuers will come,
They told us.
We grabbed onto anything we could:
Rope, handles, windows, walls, each other,
Our orange vests. Grip slipped so we linked
Our voices: called into silence for a sound.
Our life jackets bobbing in oblivion
They lost contact, they told
them.
As politicians stood on shore with
our families, taking sober photos,
frowning, hugging. We had a sense of
lost contact: no slurping mother’s kimchi soup
from squat spoons; no sibling squabblings, no
poking, tickling; no piano recitals at New Year parties.
Our fingers were found broken.
Lauren Park
1
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