From Him I Received My Middle Name

A poem of family heritage and memory.

By Megan Kim

I hear my childhood in Korean. I see it in watercolor. His landscapes wall to wall, lighthouses, deserts, gardens. Greens fading into blues, the interwoven threads of an invisible world.

One year portraits of my sister and me hung from the walls of his condo. Home from the art show, they wore their ribbons, watched us from the dining room wall. I see the girl in the painting whenever I look in the mirror, brushstrokes blurred with age.

There’s a painting of koi he was proud of. The original framed above my bed. Shadows falling into shadows, the lithe bodies of the fish like jewels turning in the dark. You can’t tell where one fish ends and the other begins. If I closed my eyes the scales flash like a code in the night. Charting the waters with the courage of the koi--this is what the Buddhists speak of. 

Because of the Japanese occupation, his exact age was unknown to us. The arbitrariness of time unfolds itself. What are years to the flash of the camera, the swing of a golf club, the sparkle of sake in a small glass, a familiar throat-clearing from the other room? If existence is the endurance of the koi fish in the churning and murky ponds, then all attempts to number only reveal the slipperiness of it, like wet scales between hands. Its gills flare  as it drops back into the depths.

I am a lucky man, he said. His last words. A lucky man. There’s a photograph of him in this city, my city, as a young sailor, maybe ten years older than I am now. Ambition in the set of his shoulders. Coat blowing backward in the Chicago wind. Skyline fading to gray in the old print. His world wide and widening. His shadow cast over the edge of Lake Michigan, moving with the rise and fall of the water. 

Photo by Sakura on Unsplash

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Megan Kim is a multiracial poet from southern Oregon, currently earning her BA in creative writing and philosophy at Wheaton College, IL. Her work has appeared on the NEA's website and in the AAWW's The Margins. She serves as poetry editor and blog manager for The Pub, Wheaton's independent academic journal. Follow her on Instagram.