In this language, so many words 
for        hurt. 속상, meaning your insides 
are rotten. All that twisting and churning,
those sinking pebbles you keep inside 
like loose coins, lost teeth. Hurt made 
flesh and eye and soft tendon, limbs 
melting into the restaurant booth, knotting 
into another body. 속                 상
like another hour past closing time, like 
the burns that stain Eomma’s wrists or the couple 
arguing in the laundromat next door. 속상 
like their drooping dog, like our heads resting 
against the grooves of popcorn walls, our skin 
remnants of disaster, skin expansive as planets, 
hydrogen and helium, atoms the moment 
before they’re split into strangers,
속상, the rot inside we call                    hurt,
call leaving, call ours,                            ours. 

This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.