My Aunt's Visit

She looked at me with sad,
pity-filled eyes,
the ones you give
small children who lose their parents in
the mall.
Light streaked dirty brown faces,
lollipop in one hand,
sticky, snot soaked sleeves…
She looked at me.

“Oh, how you’ve grown…”

Her eyes said
you
who grew up without your mother…
you
still look normal.

Normal. Like
I ran away from home
at age 6 because
Grandma didn’t let me spend my New Years money
and who was she? Not my mother
to keep me from spending
10,000 wons on candy.

Normal. Like
that day I was so angry, I became a grown up
and needed to
get the hell outta there.

Normal. Like
I caught a cab.
“How old are you? Where are you going?” the man asked.
“Six. My mother’s.
It’s between piggie supermarket
and a large white house”
He didn’t know where that was.
Ignorant man.
“You don’t know what city and street?”
He asked.
“You don’t know what city and street?”I asked back.

We finally found it. I remembered
the name of the rotisserie chicken place
beside it and he knew of it.

I got out, paid him. Thanked him.
I found my mother’s home. The same piggie mart.
Large white house beside it.

And she had moved,
The neighbor said.

When my father left my mother,
I blamed him for finding new love.

My mother,
she saw
my father in
my eyes.

could not forget…

betrayal.
how it
doesn’t end
where
it starts.

She packed a few things in a paper shopping bag.
She said, “Visit your cousins on your father’s side
once more. You will miss them,” with a smile, she said this.

And it wasn’t a
visit.
It was a
stay.

And from cousin’s house to cousin’s house
to grandma’s house, I moved
while my mother
moved.
Away from the piggie mart.

Normal.

She looked at me with those sad, pity-filled eyes..
“Oh, how you’ve grown….”