A Platter of Geobong Grapes by Seungbihn Park (15, New Jersey)

You lived in a house in Yeokchondong, at the outskirts of Seoul where corners of garments pinched on clotheslines ran across windows. There was a watch shop across your house, bold red, blue letters painted on its glass walls. Behind the counter, the cheap metal rims and faux gold straps of the watches glistened. This was the very house my father grew up in. The thin, crusty walls browned and yellowed from its decades, perhaps centuries. Faint, gray mold swelled from every corner, where the floor and the walls met. It reminded me of your blue-violet veins fanning across your wrists. 

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The slanted roof, still missing its bits, was a pile of disorganized kiwha - bricks once used to build Korean palaces but now a symbol of poverty. Halmeoni, harabeoji, I’m here. The door creaked, its edges grit against the aged, exhausted wood, translucent paper covering the spaces in between. You and halmeoni smiled. I frowned. You offered me a platter of geobong grapes but I pushed the unwashed fruits away. Grandma argued that gifts from nature should be eaten in its most natural form. I walked out to the front yard, towards the dried up garden in which sprouted browning strands of untamed grass, the flaxen rose of Sharon, losing her blush to the heat, her stem standing robust against every wind. That was the last time I saw you.    ​​