기다리는 마음 (三秋之思)

Your silence is a field of fish
I want to gather into my arms and
float along the Han (漢江.)
I'd ask them to find their way to you.

The soft soil beneath their small,
dried bodies
needs rain, tides.
I fear your quiet,
like this.

I'm always waiting
for the rain to flood
to sea
to shore
to your door.
And as you open,

you'll know
all that I'd do
though you've
not yet asked.

Needs rising like jang-ma season waters
marking the sides of the Baekdu Mountain.

Watermarks
along your sides
with my voice.

your airplane © by Rachel McKibbens

I.

over breakfast,
my father asks what you see in me.

I bite the inside of my cheek,

shove a forkful of pancakes into my mouth,
notice the salt shaker eyeing my wounds.

II.

you launch "I love yous"
from a Brooklyn fire escape.

they travel 3,000 postcard miles
and collapse into my ear, exhausted.

I pinch their noses,
breathe new life into their lungs,
fold them into airplanes,

send them back to you
and wait.

III.

there isn't a building
taller than two stories
here in Orange County.
not a single fire escape.

no point in jumping.
the worst that could happen
is a broken leg or heart.

this is why the sad kids get
so goddamn creative around here.

the mayor's son rigged his noose
to raise with the garage door
when the Mercedes came home.

a nine-year old leapt into the lion's cage
at Prentice Park Zoo after
her dog was hit by a car.

IV.

on our wedding day,
when I tell you "I do,"

it's because I do.

it's because you understand
how ten-thousand dollar apologies
still keep fathers worthless,

it's because my ribcage expands
every time I think of you,

it's for all the things
you see in me

and pretend
not to notice.

untitled by Rachel McKibbens

To my daughters, I need to say:

Go with the one who loves you biblically.

The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck.

Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle, the way
old grief is gentle.

Love the love that is messy in all its too much,

The body that rides best your body, whose mouth saddles the naked salt
of your far gone hips, whose tongue translates the rock language of
all your elegant scars.

Go with the one who cries out for his tragic sisters as he chops the winter’s wood, the one whose skin

Triggers your heart into a heaven of blood waltzes.

Go with the one who resembles most your father. Not the father you can
point out on a map,

But the father who is here. Is your home. Is the key to your front door. Know that your first love will only

Be the first. And the second and third and even fourth will unprepare you for the most important:

The Blessed. The Beast. The Last love. Which is, of course, the most terrifying kind.

Because which of us wants to go with what can murder us? Can reveal to us

Our true heart’s end and its thirty years spent in poverty?

Can mimic the sound of our birdthroated mothers, replicate the warmth of our brothers' tempers? Can pull us out of ourselves until

We are no longer sisters or daughters or sword swallowers but, instead,

Women. Who give. And lead. And take and want

And want

And want

And want

Because there is no shame in wanting.

And you will hear yourself say: Last Love, I wish to die so I may come back to you new and never tasted by any other mouth but yours.

And I want to be the hands that pull your children out of you and tuck them deep inside myself until they are

Ready to be the children of such a royal and staggering love. Or you
will say: Last Love,

I am old, and have spent myself on the courageless, have wasted too many clocks on less-deserving men, so I hurl myself

At the throne of you and lie humbly at your feet.

Last Love, let me never roll out of this heavy dream of you.

Let the day I was born mean my life will end where you end.

Let the man behind the church do what he did if it brings me to you.

Let the girls in the locker room corner me again if it brings me to you.

Let the wrong beds find me if it brings me to you.

Let this wild depression throw me beneath its hooves if it brings me to you.

Let me pronounce my hoarded joy if it brings me to you.

Let my father break me again and again if it brings me to you.

Last love, I let other men borrow your children. Forgive me.

Last love, I vowed my heart to another. Forgive me.

Last Love, I have let my blind and anxious hands wander into a room and come out empty. Forgive me.

Last Love, I have cursed the women you loved before me. Forgive me.

Last Love, I envy your mother’s body where you resided first. Forgive me.

Last Love, I am all that is left. Forgive me.

Last Love, I did not see you coming. Forgive me.

Last Love, every day without you was a life I crawled out of. Amen.

Last Love, you are my Last Love. Amen.

Last Love, I am all that is left. Amen.

I am all that is left.

Amen.