Help Wanted: Must speak music and hear thoughts.
Girl without touch seeking someone to believe.
Only those who love love over life need apply—
blind for love a quick trip to the door.
Refuse to look away—see beyond your own reach
for love, and she’ll reach back to you.

Looking out and not in, beyond the day’s round,
to see the hearts of others on the ground
and offer your own pride to comfort them.

If she can’t reach you, she’ll only cry again.
But no use to leave another number;
it’s the only way she knows to live.
Falling for love of those not meant,
too far by age, place, time or bent.
Part-time/temp an unlikely shot;
full-time, all-in the only real plot.

Help Wanted: Girl seeking touch, can’t escape from belief.
She knows what she wants, she knows who she sees.
It only took a moment—though she’d known you for years—
the right turn and there, all your heart revealed,
like a sight of your profile she’d missed before,
a sight of your smile left her heart on the floor.
Sincerity and kindness, fierce love for this world—
she couldn’t go back to not knowing before.

Help Wanted: She needs it, someone to restore
her heart was lost when her faith was won;
she only loves those she cannot implore.

You have to watch out for that first night, when the walls are bare and you sit on the floor with your takeout, feeling a little cold and very far away. You had better bring some relics, to distract your focus until you can add some color to the room and begin to put in some pieces that look like life. A few images propped along walls... something soft to twist your hands in. It almost makes me understand religion. We’ve always needed something to cling to, to prop up our belief when we feel smallest. Belief that we’ll be ok, whatever that means, until we get comfortable enough to forget the question. Don’t ever forget to pack your relics; then the room would feel truly empty.

Hands at work
But soul unmoved—
Hours spun
Without reflex

The same thought
That bore me up from dawn
Holds me still
As life goes on

Thru busy streets
Or silent rooms
My body walks
With soul removed

Watching from
Some farther place
wondering at time
Irrelevant

 Did you ever have a fresh wound, and you put it under the water to clean it, and for a second, the quality of the pain takes your breath away? Really, your breath hitches and you think, god, this is real.

Sometimes, when I think of korea, it’s like that. Not as a physical pain, but in the paralyzed moment, the catch of breath, and I don’t know what to do in that instant with the feeling of missing those places.