i loved my lover with pulmonary edema
i walked from the joongang university hospital intensive care unit to yongsan post office
coughing on the snow warning issued hangang road
every time i took a fluttery step like
dust carelessly born dead around brinks of redevelopment districts
chronic rales leaked from every nook of the
city walls stood precariously between skyscrapers draped with x rays
each spilled out red phlegm and anonymous birds flapping heavy wings below were thoroughly demolished
only a few pale ginkgo trees barely withstood
ginkgo nuts that could not ripen last season
our faces giggling in a freezing room at the daejin inn
hastily mashed onto paving blocks
sleep came with paralysis at nights i went to bed
with an empty street poised on my head dripping with the dream of my lover
left alone dragging a body full of chest up the namildang watchtower plummeting to the asphalt ground oh
like a bird ripped of its wings such dreams dark clouds clad in mourning garbs flocked to us in an instant
snow like fragments beyond the broken window dotted buried in my chest
i wrote a long long letter as if performing rites to time bloomed with sighs but
 no one would return and spring did not reply lover, lost lover alone i loved

Translated from the Korean by Min Ji Choi.

Translator’s note: the speaker in this poem invokes a tragic fire in the Yongsan district of Seoul that killed six people during protests in an encampment against forced relocation in 2009.