lyrics

• a few times defeated isn't much.
• 너는 나의 다섯 번째 계절 (you are my fifth season)
• and you discover that home is not a person or a place, but a feeling you can't get back.
• time moves quickly, with or without me. you go fast, and i'll go slow.
• even in the smallest places can a garden grow.
• running my whole life to reach this place, and just when i arrive, the moment fades out.
• i'm a loner but i'm tired.
• you got my heart and tried to turn it black, well now it's beating you, i'm taking it back, i'm taking it back from you.
• still feel i need to give you thanks / you took my edge, sharpened it in case / you were the one needed cutting away / i cut you away / you're a devil in savior's robes / made it easier to let you go / i never should have let you get so close, yeah / you got too close, too close to me.
• i don't have much that i can give to you / but i know i love the way you make me feel like i'm at home and i am not alone.
• i didn't know it back then. your meaning was that wherever i am, you will always be protecting that space.
• i am all of my joy and anxiety.
• yeah it's my truth, it's my truth. i will be covered with wounds all over, but it's my fate, it's my fate. still, i want to struggle and fight.
• maybe i, i can never fly like those flower petals over there. something like having wings, i can't. maybe i, i can't touch the sky, still, i want to stretch my hand out. i want to run, just a bit more.
• i'm still standing here with my eyes closed, lost between the deserts and oceans.
• i didn't know there were this many paths i can't go and paths i can't take.
• no matter how much i wander, i want to believe in my path.
• even if i'm slow, i will walk with my own feet.
• though i walk this crazy world's path, i still want to live longer. i want to find it, my faith.
• believing in someone like me, dealing with these tears and wounds. so thanks for becoming my light, for becoming the flower in the most beautiful moment in life.
• i go places they tell me not to, do things they tell me not to do, want things i shouldn't, get wounded again and again. you can call me stupid, then i'll just crack a smile.
• i don't want to succeed with work i don't like.
• i trust myself, since the reason why my back hurts is so that wings can sprout.
• though the beginning may be humble, the future will be prosperous.
• i want to try forgetting the things that are dark and lonely together with you.
• even though these wings sprouted from pain, they're wings that face the light. even if it's hard and it hurts, if i can fly, i'm going to fly.

poems

• and o i want to be fixed, but i am already fixed; why don't i feel it?
• promising myself i would not do this again is what kept me going.
• a passerby with proud eyes whom you'll never know.
• at first you didn't know me. i was a shape moving rapidly, nervous at the edge of your vision. a flat, high voice, dark slash of hair across my cheekbone.
• sometimes it's hard to guess how long film needs to be exposed. i wanted to get the colors right.
• sometimes, parents & children become the most common strangers. eventually, a street appears where they can meet again. or not.
• do i have to forgive in order to love? or do i have to love for forgiveness to even be possible?
• who am i kidding? i don't own anything worth packing into anything. we are cardboard boxes, you and i, stacked nowhere near each other and humming different tunes. it is too late to be writing this. i am writing this to tell you something less than neutral, which is to say i'm sorry. it was never you.
• the poem in which i am territory that is under dispute and no one will occupy it because of fear and uncertainty.
• still, i am without exit wound.
• all my stories are about being left, all yours about leaving. so we should have known.
• i'll choose for myself next time who i'll reach out and take as mine, in the way i might stand at a fruit stall, having decided to ignore the apples the mangoes and the kiwis but hold my hands above a pile of oranges as if to warm my skin before a fire. not only have i chosen oranges, but i'll also choose which orange — i'll test a few for firmness, scrape some rind off with my fingernail so that a citrus scent will linger there all day. i won't be happy with the first one i pick but will try different ones until i know you. how will i know you? you'll feel warm between my palms and i'll cup you like a handful of holy water. a vision will come to me of your exotic land: the sun you swelled under, the tree you grew from. a drift of white blossoms from the orange tree will settle in my hair and i'll know. this is how i will choose you: by feeling you, smelling you, by slipping you into my coat. maybe then i'll climb the hill, look down on the town we live in with sunlight on my face and a miniature sun burning a hole in my pocket. thirsty, i'll suck the juice from it. from you. when i walk away i'll leave behind a trail of lamp-bright rind.
• i don't know if your wings are real, but i've never seen you without them, and i follow you everywhere.
• when instead of swallowing a fistful of white pills, you decided to shower, the palm trees nodded in agreement, a choir of crickets singing behind your swollen eyes.
• i love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, i love you simply, without problems or pride: i love you in this way because i don't know any other way of loving.
• before the days of self service, when you never had to pump your own gas, i was the one who did it for you, the girl who stepped out at the sound of a bell with a blue rag in my hand, my hair pulled back in a straight, unlovely ponytail. this was before automatic shut-offs and vapor seals, and once, while filling a tank, i hit a bubble of trapped air and the gas backed up, came arcing out of the hole in a bright gold wave and soaked me — face, breasts, belly and legs. and i had to hurry back to the booth, the small employee bathroom with the broken lock, to change my uniform, peel the gas-soaked cloth from my skin and wash myself in the sink. light-headed, scrubbed raw, i felt pure and amazed — the way the amber gas glazed my flesh, the searing, subterranean pain of it, how my skin shimmered and ached, glowed like rainbowed oil on the pavement. i was twenty. in a few weeks i would fall, for the first time, in love, that man waiting patiently in my future like a red leaf on the sidewalk, the kind of beauty that asks to be noticed. how was i to know it would begin this way: every cell of my body burning with a dangerous beauty, the air around me a nimbus of light that would carry me through the days, how when he found me, weeks later, he would find me like that, an ordinary woman who could rise in flame, all he would have to do is come close and touch me.

tv shows / dramas

• no matter how much better others' things may seem, they all have their faults. — reply 1988, episode 4
• you don't just deserve to be happy and to be loved. it's your birthright. — angel from hell, episode 1
• i realized something really big today. i thought it was all over once the petals bloomed. but once those petals open, there is another fruit that blooms. i forgot about that. i only got sad that my flower petals weren't going to bloom again. i couldn't see that. — reply 1988, episode 18
• today is a day you will remember. you threw me away, mother. however, i will not leave. from now on...you will have to look only at me. — scarlet heart: ryeo, episode 4

other

• let go or be dragged.
• you can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. you can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life. — joan miró