Prelude
By Ae Hee Lee
Traduttore, traditore.
—Unknown
Your infidelities will have changed you.
—Olena Kalytiak Davis
I don’t deny it. I’ve taken the dagger
of my tongue and gently
run it over your ear. I’ve often
thought Umma, said Mother, thought
it wasn’t my mother whom I’d spoken about—
all this without you suspecting me,
I’d like to think. I’ve whispered Te quiero to actually mean
I want you. I had to use a Japanese word, ginko, to explain
in English my first time seeing the splitting yellow
fans of eun-haeng leaves in Korea.
There’s so much of the past in these
choices. Let me tell you
how I wished for a long, unfractured life:
I slurped noodles, threaded
needles. But again and again I dreamt
I was a series of footprints
pressed deep into the earth, covered in snow.
I told my parents about this, saying:
나는 hilo의 삶을 바랬어요
조심스럽고 잘리지 않게 자라고싶었어요. 하지만 soñé
que me había vuelto muchos 발자국들, 땅에 깊이 눌려진 발자국들,
cubiertos de nieve.
Do you trust me? Trust me,
just in the beginning. Then translate
me for yourself, question me
unsparingly like a sparrow
to another sparrow about breadcrumbs.
