By HANNAH KWON
we never quite learned to surrender
ourselves at this table, but coped
with our desperation to know each other
by surrounding ourselves with rice
and plates of 반찬 we’d season
with grains of salt spilling from our eyes–
and this salt would spread quickly, like grief
always does, trickling into red pepper paste
and flakes of anchovy skin, salt desecrating
the soup we’d double-dip our spoons into,
so when metal met our lips,
salt would sting
and linger on our tongues–
but we would ignore the way sorrow fit
in our mouths and just say the soup’s a little salty
in place of everything we wanted to say
but swallowed.
Writer | Hannah Kwon ’27 | hwkwon27@amherst.edu
Editor | Kei Lim ’25 | nlim25@amherst.edu