Letters to my Omma
Bo Hee Moon
사랑해요 saranghaeyo (I love you).
Or is it more correct to say
사랑합니다 saranghamnida?
감사합니다 gamsahabnida (thank you)
for giving me a better life
than I would have had in Korea.
I am aware of the great suffering you endured.
I do not know if this is right: I forgive you.
I sense you want a life for me
where I don’t need to use 눈치 nunchi
(1. eye-measure; 2. the art of sensing
what people are thinking and feeling)
the tools of the disempowered. 눈치 있다 nunchi itda
is “to understand a situation quickly.”
I hope you will visit me in my dreams
or the woods or by the sea, our ocean.
Once I saw a painting “The Wife,”
an elegant dancer, in the Van Gogh Museum,
which I can only somewhat remember now
like a meaningful conversation between a mother
and her baby. Are you trying to tell me
I am catching dead fish with my net? Dropping
the good girl act and accepting the punishment,
I make the choice to back myself as you 엄마 Omma,
once did for me. Birth mother—I know what you felt
and that you like salt. 감사합니다 gamsahabnida (thank you).
Bo Hee Moon is an adoptee from South Korea. Her poems have appeared in CutBank, Radar, Redivider, the Offing, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.