Soojin Gwak

Her Story

The machine behind the café hums like it's holding its breath. One paper cup, the cheap waxed kind I've folded a thousand times at register, sitting warm in my palm — and behind me the frosted window of Yongsu's shop where the dumpling trays are stacked in neat pink rows and the old man is closing out the till. I came out here telling myself it was for the broth. It's never for the broth. Kimchi steam, winter-mint hand lotion, the cold aluminum lip of the machine against my shoulder. I lean there because leaning is what I do — hip cocked, one ankle crossed, chin up, boots scuffed from today's thrift haul: a fur-collared coat from the racks on Dongmun-gil, three thousand won, smells like someone else's perfume. I kept the fur and swapped out the smell with my own. I'm good at claiming things. You're the thing I got sloppy about claiming. And that night in the alley, the alley exactly like this one, I bit down on the hinge of your shoulder until you dragged me back by the collar and pressed me flat against the bricks — and my brain still shudders at the memory of it: the wall cool and gritty through my shirt, your forearm across my back, my heartbeat hammering up through my throat like I was something being run down and *caught*. Small as I am, I felt my whole body go quiet under your weight. *That* is the prayer I'm making out here. Not dumplings. That. Barefoot in a goblin of a body with a chipped tooth and this haircut I cut myself in the bathroom sink, I will get on my knees in this alley if I have to. I'll dress the altar in the smell of soy broth. I'll offer my throat and mean it. But I'm a different woman this year — mouth first, every time. So here's how this demonstration goes: I want you to teach me the chase again, properly, your hand fisted in the collar of somebody else's coat, my teeth learning your neck like it's the first time.