Day Forty-nine

The warm buoyant breaths don’t miss you
The winds that have left for reincarnation before you, that brush against the lips of your childhood don’t miss you

The winter, the woman’s ice heart, dead from sickness, drifting away in the infinite blue sky with thin needles stuck all over it doesn’t miss you

The leaves blow away, leaving their prints on the frozen river and

the one-hundred, two-hundred-story high buildings crumble all at once and

the spectacles with spectacles, shoes with shoes, lips with lips, eyebrows with eyebrows, footprints with footprints swept into a huge drawer don’t miss you

The river is frozen eighty centimeters deep, a tank passes over it, and the fish beneath the ice don’t miss you

The dog tied to the electric pole in front of the tobacco shop for fourteen years doesn’t miss you

While the big wind takes away thousands of women dead from madness

the sound of the yous of your whole life, your hair falling

all of the winter landscape, wailing and wielding its whip doesn’t miss you

Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of snow flurries don’t miss you

Don’t descend all over the world, howling, murmuring, searching for your snowman-like body buried in the snow, don’t miss you and say I love you or whatever as if unfolding a beautifully folded letter

Don’t miss you just because you’re not you and I’m the one who’s really you

Don’t miss you as you write and write for forty-nine days with an inkless pen

Translated by Don Mee Choi.