halmoni (grandma)

i. nail-clipping 

crescent moons fall from my silver clipper
with faint clicks, building a pyre
on warm ondol floorboards. across the room
grandma catches the small sound 
from a waterfall of english listening exercises
  buzzing from her radio. your nail so thin. why 
don’t you eat your vitamin?

  as she rises from the unfinished 
red sweater she’s knitting for me, i catch
  the flap of her wrinkled skirt, the ghost 
of mothballs and garden dirt. when she returns
  with a glass of milk and five vitamins nestled
on a plastic preschool plate, i refuse. it’s fine. 


ii. five

on may 10 at five a.m., when white 
flower petals descend and grandma awakens,
  it’s our birthday. grandma endures 
oil splashes while frying seafood pancakes,
   frothing a tomato yakult smoothie. she embarks 
on the fifty-five minute bus ride to my seoul apartment.

  before gangnam-gu, dogokdong, grandma makes her way 
through the crowd of seoulites. the tornado of youngsters
surrounds her when she falls from the bus steps to the street. 
honking horns & ambulance sirens & the shouting bus driver & red
  unspooling on the ground. 


iii. red

winter returns & it’s time to clip
my fingernails again. i sit on the same ondol floor
            where the milky-colored nails trickle like tears.
i wish i hadn’t wanted good food
  for my birthday. i wish i had 
taken the vitamins & corrected her english
  when she asked me for help. 

it’s the day of grandma’s surgery & i clip
  my nails too far down. blood brings 
good luck, she said. i hold
grandma’s needle and stitch 
the sweater into a blanket for her legs,
  her oil-stained skirt.

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Erin Kim is a senior at Phillips Academy Andover from Kirkland, Washington. Her work has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Princeton University, Columbia College Chicago, Smith College, Hollins University, the Boston Youth Poet Laureate Program, the Library of Congress, and The New York Times Learning Network. Currently, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of Andover’s yearbook, Pot Pourri, and as Managing Editor of Andover’s student-run newspaper, The Phillipian.