To One I Knew
Hyejung Kook
You, who I knew once,
all that remains now is the space
where you used to be.
Like an old photograph left pinned
in full sunlight, the colors have bleached away,
the lines are wavering ghosts of themselves.
An afterimage that I cannot see.
Even the space you take up in me
has grown smaller, pressed farther
and farther away by time.
All that is left now is the distant shape
of your memory, a glass jar,
holding nothing but air and light.
Hyejung Kook’s poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Hyphen Magazine, The Indianapolis Review, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and wildness, Other works include an essay in The Critical Flame and Flight, a chamber opera libretto. She is a Fulbright grantee and a Kundiman fellow.