Han-sum :: Breath, Singular

In Korean, it’s the same

      strand of wind just unspooled

a little further.

                        *

    I sigh, and it’s as if I’ve blown

onto my father’s brow

until it crumples—

                        *

There’s endlessness

in the han-sum: an inward-

stretching universe of lungs

                            and dark matter.

                        *

At my sighing habit,

      my father rephrases

          an idiom, says, at this rate

   the draft will cleave

the ground under your feet,

        make the earth flicker

out like a sparkler's afterglow.

                        *

    I’m assured

even the smallest breath can

                       ripple.

Ae Hee Lee is the author of the chapbook Bedtime || Riverbed (CompoundPress, 2017). She was born in South Korea, raised in Peru, and now lives in the U.S. She received her MFA from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming at POETRY, Narrative, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, and the Journal among others.