Lucky

On the first day of kindergarten, I learn
that being Korean is a half-formed answer.
My Barbie-blonde teacher studies the slant
of my almond eyes and whispers,
Which one are you from? North or South?

My mouth stretches across the Yellow Sea,
searching for home enmeshed
in the sunken spine of a classroom map.
Twirling my crayon skyward, I choose
North!
to which she chuckles, no, sweetie,
you’re clearly from the South. Lucky you.

I am so lucky to inherit the prettier wreckage
of an apocalypse that cleaved my country in two,
waking in a lucky body housed in a luxury apartment,
as the silent weight of a rusted border
muscles its way through tendon and meat.

Korea is a lucky place to be born into,
so long as you can stomach an atomic bomb
tick-tocking with the rhythm of your child’s breath
or the occasional firing at a muddied soldier
wearing your father’s face.

You see, my country bears the shape
of a teardrop simmering in a hibernating war.

Somewhere across the ragged line, my sister
crawls beneath a lattice of barbed wire,
a gunshot ruffle clenched against her chest.
Somewhere at the blistered lip of our shared horizon,
my little brother learns how to assemble his first rifle.

Don’t you see?
Korea is a lucky place to be born into,
a multi-trillion-dollar economy
built on the bones of its own children,
nourished by the warm pulsing blood
of my brothers and sisters,
half kin, half enemy,
lucky to be severed at the root;
lucky to belong to a country
that cannot hold us whole.

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Amy Shin is an undergraduate student at New York University, majoring in English on the creative writing track. She was born in Korea, raised in Hong Kong, and studied in Hangzhou. Her poems seek to unearth transgenerational memory against the fractured backdrop of Korea from the twentieth century onwards.