Hyo-eun Kim

I am Kim-Hyo-eun. Hyo as in dawn, eun as in divine grace. It is the name my father, at 32, gave to his second daughter. I was born, and three younger siblings followed after. In this way, I became daughter, younger sister, onni (older sister to a girl), and nuna (older sister to a boy).

The seven of us went many places in my father's old car. We saw pretty pebbles and small fish in valley streams so cold they made your teeth chatter. We lay in ugly tents on the beach and heard the sound of waves rolling in, overlapping. Dark nights when the grasshoppers cried, on roads without a single light, we encountered numberless stars, and the white moon shining on each other's faces. We grew up seeing the many things our father showed us.

At some point I became an adult, found the path I would walk, and went down it. I saw the things I wanted to see, passed by what was otherwise, pretending I couldn't see it, and walked on diligently. Then all of a sudden I saw the people on the path. I began to put wrinkled hands, different colored faces, arms making various gestures, into pictures. As the pictures accumulated steadily, I too wanted to show them to someone, just as my father had showed us children when we were young. Things I had seen on the path, things that were near at hand but could not be seen, things not visible to the eye but still significant.

From I Am the Subway