Ms. Won Sung Eun, born in Daegu city in 1992, has been living in Seoul city since she was 20. She debuted with Literature JoongAng in 2015. She published ‘Forever Knowing the Name of the Bird’ (2021) by Morning Moon, a publishing company that carefully selects and publishes young poets. Her works were introduced as ‘MZ Generation Poets Special’ in the fall 2021 issue of the Symbolology Research Institute, a poetry journal with avant-garde aesthetics. She worked at the Literary Translation Institute of Korea and the Ilmin Museum of Art. She is currently studying aesthetics at Hongik University Graduate School.
A letter written in bad handwriting by a left-handed person with his right hand
To the gentle firefly
In the end, you never returned home.
The whole universe tried to cooperate with you to understand the light, but you sat down on the road, pulled out the pieces of glass stuck in your heart, and were absorbed in seeing it and calling it light and beauty.
I couldn’t say it wasn’t love. You said this while giggling loudly.
“No one saw me until I picked up the shattered fragments on my darkest, reddest pulse, and now everyone is looking at me in horror.”
I couldn’t say anything because you were crying the tears you couldn’t cry, but you’re still just trotting along without picking up a single pebble that looks like hope.
Start again from here
From here, it is decided whether your record will be a record of life or a record of death.
It got dark and I waited for you in a row with windows that couldn’t open in any direction.
The curtains of fatalists deceived you. Every morning, a cold wind blew through.
Cynical materialists, immune to idealism, have hung excessively bright fluorescent lights from the ceiling of the long hallway.
Breath is densest when you are alone, and the names of dead friends written on breath are erased by the wind and rain.
Did you end up becoming a secretive and cruel person!
Did you end up frowning from the blinding light!
There was no humor in you, there was only beauty; there was a lot of beauty. Having a secret means
Rather than tending to mysterious and fragrant flowers or watering miracles and lies in full bloom in the ancient world.
It was almost like trapping a damaged and torn shadow in the basement, like a heavy coat that was no longer worn.
Remember again from here
Just because the sun is burning doesn’t mean you can put it out
A pile of firewood left in a warehouse is rotting in the rain.
It’s innocently corrupting
This firewood is firewood that catches fire easily. Even a single drop of condensed oil can burn down an entire warehouse. You say you like this firewood. This is firewood made from old trees whose hair was dragged on the ground while a large truck was carrying something the size of its body.
Sing again from here
Coincidence is a bird discovering its own value.
A rare species of bird with a long and thin beak, a bird with only one wing, but even that was injured.
A bird
Whose warmth remains only in the wound area!
Dying in your hands
Stare again from here
The dark red wall looks like an old bruise.
The purple graffiti scrawled on it look like loot collected by the defeated soldiers.
Don’t scratch the roses in full bloom in May
Don’t point to a nameless girl and call her ruins.
Don’t imitate the yellow bell pepper’s toothless smile.
Don’t rummage through burned records with kindling.
You have many names. All of those names are easy to steal, and you try not to imagine a life where you embrace the names that are easy to steal like a bouquet of flowers.
You try not to smell the smell of withered flowers being stepped on.
Having many names means having no names.
Like a dried flower that has lost all its color and been bleached, like a flower that has been hung.
Start again from here
Some beauty breaks people’s hearts
Like the noise of a beehive, jealousy blinds you.
It even hurts their souls.
Pale and soft, like a cup of room temperature milk going bad.
Like a red apple rotting, slowly and fatally
Love again from here
The almond tree has a new shadow
Just as a bird hatching from a nest develops an ego
Roots are tied to a thin black string
A black bird is a bird that lives in a high chimney. It is a bird that has become black after covering its entire body with ash. It is a bird that retains the memory of a fire and its original color has become unknown.
From here my little, light, soft bird goes back to the beginning and starts crying again.