Kisaeng

“I want to understand the joy I felt as I was letting him go.” —Hwang Jini As I listened to the fabric of his jacket assume the casual shape of leave-taking. I learned how to unhinge form from breath unbind & unknot the numinous black, so that again I was a woman & an artist whose ravens fell onto the ondol floor like cords, not a suicide’s hair floating in a village well & souring the water. Callus on my finger, cushion for the kayabam, we shall pluck the string to forget triumphs before royalty taxing us for a celadon barge, shall sweep princes’ names into a crevice where we store besotted & sudden proposals to suck a jujube’s succulent orb, as if we required their directions to resist the stone in which a waiting life will crack a rooting. Tendril of song, evening calm, guide my sense of use across the instrument transforming my desire for vengeance into forest hearth smoke from which I fled as a pretty child, selected by the king’s men. Help me never to forget the elation I felt when my first patron swore by the river’s force his love for me, & I understood its swelling to rush & breach could teach me to survive it by emptying myself to play a perfect note.