foxes (act I and II)

Joongki remembers when they first met, when the taking had already begun. The emptying of the crops and clay jars. The families walking further south, away from men who had once been familiar. The boots of soldiers that followed. She came over the hill, barefoot. He asked for her family's name and she shook her head, said, I don't have a need for that. He could smell the night on her breath, [[warm milk]] and rose stems and old iron wiped clean.

Beastings: the first milk that mothers make. They say it has the first vitamins that the baby will ever need, minerals to fill bones, stretch sinew into shape, strengthen spines so that they may see over mountains and moon. But the men came, took the bottles, poured them into glass jars to cool at the bottom of lakes and rivers. They thought, We will take this pre-milk for ourselves. We can become stronger. Unaware: the men's bodies were too bent and broken and leather-fed, organs calcified from the alcohol and the smoke of the mines and trenches. How they hungered for things that never belonged to them. How their bones clicked against the shore, weighted by rot and [[hunger->rose stems]] and gunmetal. How they tried to lift their limbs even as the current took them and their water-filled throats.

The first calls came at the end of the month. One boy who walked home holding a trophy and a bouquet of flowers. One boy who had told his mother once of the dreams where he'd been taken somewhere underground, where he could still hear the trains. In this dream, he had been made to dig a tunnel deep into the ground, a candle to light the way and voices of men from above him that only yelled, Faster, you won't make it in time, and when the boy woke up, he felt the blisters in his palms, his sweat-soaked sheets. Each boy with his belly curtained open. The villagers wrote down what the boys wore, the placement of their hands, how the boys died smiling like they had kept the right secrets. Livers removed clean and neat. They blamed the men in unfiorm, but the men in uniform said, It was an animal. It was something [[hungry]].

Her knuckles traced along Joongki's jaw and stopped at the scar on his chin. He had once thought he could fly, that he could leap from roof to tree and call down to his family, I did it, I can only go higher from here. His father would say, I am going to work. His father would throw rocks and pebbles, tree branches shaped into javelins. She asked, What did your father do? He was a butcher, Joongki said. He remembered the red stains, the smell of rendered fat, bleached skins, plucked feathers. Still, never enough meat for their plates. The men above his father packed away tough cuts, chicken heads, tail bones. We learned to love gristle and stock, he said. She licked at his scar, said, It's easy to get used to the taste. Joongki pressed his lips to her temple, whispered words into her cheeks, tasted the warm of her thighs. He bit softly, wanting to leave a mark that only he could remember, like a river on a map or a torn page from a [[dictionary]].

pearl (n.) 1. They found it in the bellies of mollusks, hard, rounded, smoothed. They imagined the way that tongues could turn sand into milk, rub the pebbles clean, only swallow the pieces that weren't worth saving. 2. You called it a bead sometimes. You told me that it held all your power, your heart and blood and memories. Something close to soul or root. You pointed to your chest, tapped your collarbone and ribs, said, I remember every hunt. 3. I wasn't sure what you meant, but I knew that you came home at sunrise, a smile like you had drunk enough of every new stream, [[red in your cheeks]], dripping down your chin.

She told Joongki, You would have loved my mother even though I don't remember her exactly, her eyes or her lips or the curve of her nose. She said, But my mother would have liked you because she liked everyone. She said, I remember she took people out on boats. She taught them how the water rose, how to hook bait, cut fish throats, and empty their insides. I've never been on a [[boat]], Joongki said. Me neither, she said.

Joongki thought he understood when his father told him, This was never meant for you. You were only meant for axe handles and dirt and manure. He understood as she cut through his skin with her scalpel-teeth, when he felt the muscle and sinew undo, the steam of his own offal. The warm shed of red, her fingers and lips at his liver. I'm sorry, he said, I'm sorry. I thought I could have been with you, she said, his bile in her teeth. He understood though. He understood that there is hunger and the shallow flesh of it. He had tasted her lips, her neck. He had felt the shape of her in their bed every morning. Warmth was its own sustenance. But here: Joongki still held to her fingers, feeling himself drain through the cracks in the floor, the separation of board and bone and blood. He understood the pearl as neither given nor taken. I can stay here, she said, I can wait. By morning, his body would be found, alone. By then, he'd understood that his father was wrong. [[or->second]]

The men in uniform allowed the villagers to sail out on fishing boats, dump the boys into the ocean. They said prayers, settled flowers on the waves. The few who still had pictures, smiling and bright once, kissed them and rolled them into soju bottles. But the sun had taken so much of the ocean, now more salt than water, more syrup than brine. The boybodies floated back to the top, no matter how much the men pushed them down with oars, poles, and fishing rods. Without livers, the boys floated easily, and their hollow stomachs echoed as their mothers and fathers prodded. And so they weighted the bodies with what they could find: stones, bricks, rusting anchors roped around their ankles. They expected that some would wash ashore, their bellies unbloated by the sea, like unwanted gifts. They expected that they would have to throw them back in or build pyres with what little wood and fuel was left. Some of the fathers were even hopeful to see their boys washed up to shore, hopeful for the idea of coming back. But they forgot the sea's [[thirst->first]], its selfishness.

Creeping: by the end of the month, the men in uniform would leave. There's no more for us to take, they said, There are other places for this war. They didn’t take much with them. The clothes they wore, empty pockets, fishing wire. Many left rings, forgetting their whispered unions as something imagined or dreamed save for the grey hairs now, the brief taste of salt and iron and strawberry, the photos that they held but couldn’t look at. The leaving was easy. The forgetting was easy. There were others though. The men who had felt weighted, who drank poison, dug shallow ditches, pushed coins into their eyes. The village sat empty save for a few families, a few ghosts. The goats felt their udders beginning to plump and fill again. The sand clumped into a powder that could learn to provide. Grass grew unstained, roots as strong as bones, trees shaking the smell of iron from their arms. [[or->third]]

They learned to sew the bodies up, stuffed first with dirt and stone and matchheads to replace the livers and hearts that had been taken, that had once filled space. And at first, these sewn bodies with grayglass eyes sat up and stared out at windows, and their husbands and wives thought, See how they search for warmth and listen to leaves, just like they used to. But those bodies could barely hold together their own flesh. How they turned to faces once kissed, hands once warmed, said, Why would you do this? Why would you take me back to here? Or: the ones who asked, What did they say when I died? What did they say about my life? And their husbands and wives would touch them, try to hold their brittle fingers, their dirt-covered cheeks. They would say, Remember your birthday? Remember the rice cakes and the gloves I knit you. Remember that it was raining in August? And the husbands and wives would trace the clumsy [[seams->river]], the places where the yarn didn't match the joints or muscle, knowing that it would be undone, that there would be burying to do again.

I remember little of my mother. Warm wheat, leather-baked hands, her arm to my chest when the car suddenly stopped. She used to say things like, When you love, you have to give more than you take. She used to say things like, I would build a lighthouse for you. She used to say things like, There’s no such thing as staying. She would take me to the beach and point out at the waves. She'd say, The shells sing underwater. It’s how they catch the fish. She would point past the waves, say, The horizon holds secrets like a map. Someday, you will go looking. Someday, you'll find it. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, she held my face in her hands, her skin the smell of honey and barley water. She called me a name that I don’t recall, sang me to sleep. I thought I could have helped her. I thought I could find what I wanted. I thought I could build her a lighthouse, stone by stone, stanchions taller than trees, a light that would tell passing ships, I'm here. I follow the soldiers from the village, understanding that there is meat wherever they go. Before the pearl, before I had learned the taste of liver and bile and heartstring, I wish I had understood. I wish I had known. Mom, when will I know?