My father told me this story after my halabeoji died:
once, my uncle came home crying.
He’d been beat up by some punk, so my halabeoji
beat him, my uncle, for his weakness. Then,
my halabeoji beat that kid too.
My father, then
not yet my father,
saw this.
Growing up,
us kids were spanked on the butt.
The last time,
I was not old enough to know better
but old enough to realize
I’d been afraid for nothing.
It doesn’t hurt,
I told my father, defiant.
His arm hung in the recoil. Furious,
my father said,
it’s not supposed to hurt, and turned away.
I left, confused by shame.
I think about this whenever I clench my fist,
drawing the line from knuckle to elbow,
a bolt in the crossbow of my shoulder.
Who I could look like,
how my halabeoji looked to my uncle,
bloodied, or my father
who, afraid of strike and recoil,
saw who we could become.
–
Michael Sun (he/him) is a Korean American poet from the suburbs of Chicago. His poems appear in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Salt Hill Journal, and Honey Literary, among others. He is a resident physician at the University of Chicago and tweets with @michaelsun_md.