My girlfriend became a hungry ghost on the
4th of August, twig-necked with skin as wet
as gasoline, needlepoint mouth unable to keep
down anything. We met on a language exchange
app, me the English teacher who’d swooped into
Hongdae like a sudden wind, her the ulzzang who
dreamed of opening a BBQ restaurant in America.
She drank raw crab like honey, soy sauce pooling
into the hollow of her throat, while I graded papers
on the carpet of her studio, my tongue burning from the
instant noodles she’d promised, giggling, would not be
spicy. I remember her tapping on cherry lip tint in
the hallway mirror, her kisses humming down my spine
like glitter, the yellow rented bike that was always
slick with mud because she loved to punch through
the rain. Fried chicken and beer at 3 a.m.,
Konglish by the river. Neon outlines of buildings,
bamboo sheets under black leaves. Easy to be crushed by
loneliness in the big city. Now she fakes a tremor of
a heartbeat just for me. She left behind a mother who
runs a mandu stall in Busan, a ten-year-old brother
lost in video games. I watch the sun ripple over the
Han River like tiny blades. Her jawline was chiseled
down to a single point, eyelids puffy and stitched
into anime hugeness, an exoskeletal body, the red
cracks showing. Now she sits in a room, waiting.
Food turns to dust under her touch, everything
crumbling. A wound blooms, a slow burning.
“I didn’t want to die,” she tells me one night,
her words tucked between my shoulder blades.
“I just wanted someone to see me.”
I am a stranger in Seoul,
made stranger by what I am
about to do. The lantern cuts
through the river like a knife,
carving out a freedom, a warm
knowing. The sky doesn’t fall
the night she departs, hooked to
a light of my own making. I watch
her float across the dim silence,
the stars still uncracked, the moon
still so full, the water just a
flow of tears now, the incense
already old.
She always said I wasn’t just a teacher,
but a connector of worlds—
© 2020 Millie Ho
Millie Ho’s work appears or is forthcoming from Lightspeed Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, Fireside Magazine, and others. She was nominated for a 2019 Rhysling Award and is a graduate of Clarion West. Originally from Toronto, she now lives in Montreal. Find her at millieho.net and on Twitter @Millie_Ho.