Watching

I make a certain effort
to give my sister in Korea
the impression
that I am interested,
since, after all, I reached out to her.
Anything less might be seen
as vengeful,
as if I’d sought her out
just to turn away.

I watch her Korean life,
I watch diligently,
several videos a day,
of this Korean life,
with two children,
with face masks and bucket hats,
colorful shoelaces,
and Korean comfort food.

I recognize kimchi,
and other dishes
I don’t know by name
but might have tasted
in Seoul, Berlin, Stockholm,
San Francisco, Oslo, Seoul,
in that order, I think.
Once, I even commented,
praising her food
with a hungry-faced emoji.

Another time, the children played
with frogs in the living room,
white, polished, freshly mopped surfaces.
She shared many videos of the frogs,
as if they were family pets.

I’ve seen the children
watching TV from the floor,
eating their Korean comfort food,
then dozing off, half-sleeping,
in front of their screen,
mirroring me.

I don’t always understand
her videos or who they’re meant for.
But I assume she notices
that I’ve watched,
so I don’t have to respond any more
to show her that I witness
this Korean life
on my phone.

Dutifully, I watch
her videos of Korean meals,
Korean frogs,
Korean children,
and Korean landscapes,
which I once in a comment,
mostly out of courtesy,
called ‘beautiful’.

Content

My sister in Korea sent me photos
from the funeral of our father.
A few days ago I tried to look
for the photos in my inbox,
but I didn’t remember her name,
at least not the Korean characters for it.
I searched for English words
that could have occurred in our emails,
to retrieve the funeral photos.

Apparently, I didn’t want to download them.
That would have meant creating a folder,
naming the folder,
moving the image files from Downloads
into the newly created folder,
and pasting that subfolder
into a fitting main folder
I didn’t have at that moment.

Now, I have a document with the speech
I gave at my adoptive father’s funeral,
a document I didn’t want to delete just yet.
Now the document lurks on the hard drive,
haunting me, kind of.

Perhaps I should create a folder
for content related to these two men:
photos from my Korean father’s funeral,
the speech from my Norwegian father’s funeral.

I remember an urn and a framed portrait,
the urn placed in a sort of cabinet,
and I didn’t see any people,
only those gleaming objects
in a clean, freshly mopped white room.

I don’t remember what she wrote,
or what the subject line said,
or if she only savagely sent the photos
without a subject line or message.
I haven’t mentioned to her
that my adoptive father died shortly after,
that I gave a speech at his funeral,
and that I’d like to know
what they said or thought
about our Korean father
in that white room.

Maybe I could translate
my speech into English
to share my thoughts
on the Norwegian
who passed away
shortly after the Korean
to tease out her takes
on our father.

Colombia

A colleague mentioned
that she knew an adoptee
from Colombia,
who had recently become
a leader in an adoptee organization
and suddenly became very Colombian,
which she found strange and suspicious.

She seemed to assume I agreed
and that I shared her point of view.
What could I have said
to give her that impression.

Suddenly, I felt inclined to take
the Colombian’s side.
Why did she find it suspicious
that the Colombian adoptee
had become curious
about Colombianness,
whatever that might mean.

You’re not supposed to change
ethnicity or disrupt your identity,
my colleague seemed to suggest,
at least not more than once.

We looked at each other,
seemingly carefully contemplating
this moment that had occurred
in our quiet office space.
My colleague seemed offended,
I seemed secretly offended,
we played it cool.

Image © isaac