Cold.

Kim Hye-Sun

 It was like I was inside the black-and-white photo of you looking
back. We stared at each other from different worlds.
 It was always cold inside this photo of you. Trees stood all along the
river, coughing and coughing.
Whenever I opened my eyes, I was climbing a snowy mountain.
I would barely turn a corner and find fields of pure-white snow, and an
infinity of precipices jutting out beneath sharp cliffs.
There was an evening when I looked into your eyes, wide like a frozen
sky.
In the village, a rumor spread about a ghost who would return to spread
a fever,
so smokestacks shook their bodies helter-skelter over every chimney.
I drove you out completely. Now none of you lives inside me.
An avalanche shook inside my chest for over an hour.
When the trees coughed and snow fell off their bodies, icicles shot up
violent in the empty valley.
I sat down on a frozen bench with my lips trembling and the wind across
my face.
I wanted to get out of this place-this photo of you looking back. 

Translations from the Korean By Vanessa Falco & Kim Sunghyun

Kim Hyesoon, a prominent contemporary poet from Korea, has published ten collections of poetry. Her poetry in translation includes Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers (2008), All the Garbage of the World, Unite! (2011), and Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrowcream (2014).

Vanessa Falco is a poet and translator of Korean poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry International, Smartish Pace, and Enizagam, and she was awarded a Norman Mailer Poetry Fellowship.

Kim Sunghyun is a South Korean poet and professor. His Korean poetry books include Metropolis, Metropolis 2, and Metropolis 3.