Sharing the Salty Taste, One Piece at a Time

📖How Many Dreams Has the Pillow Endured?_Kwon Min-kyung’s Poetry Collection

When I encounter jokes that bloom amidst pain, life becomes unbelievably light. Whenever it gets too heavy, and I want to throw everything away and be erased without a trace, I recall a joke. Then, pffft, it becomes trivial. And I want to try living well again, just a little. I offer a joke as a gift to the pillow that silently supports the accumulated pain behind my closed eyes every night.

📝 Thoughts and Sentences I Loved

Poet’s Note

A strange yet welcome shoulder facing my words. Daringly, I lean my head.

pg.37

What I wish for you. Even if you fall seriously ill, tell a joke. If there’s a joke, it’s okay.

**

The older sister in the bed next to mine when I was hospitalized in the ovarian cancer ward at the cancer center. She often told jokes. At night, her stern-looking husband would visit, and they would both cry. Her age then was about my age now. Twelve cheerful years have passed, just as she said she would protect her ovaries, even just a little, because she wanted to have a child.

They say I still have thirty years left

**

What more do I need to know in advance? I’m just okay. Let’s hold hands and cook Neoguri ramen.

**

Dawn on the first day of November The jokes and complaints I uttered. Convenience store sandwich Sharing the salty taste, one piece at a time

pg.47

I want to be like that Laughing closely and eating Jjamppong Between promising not to dwell in each other after death Like an alliance of villains, we will live in uneasy peace

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May my soul reach somewhere Dwell in someone for just a moment Then leave while changing buses or crossing a traffic light

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Hanging from the tip of a pinky finger Scraped off by a mandoline slicer and falling with a tok Often slicing radishes A few drops of blood falling Falling Snow falling a few times Dropping off a black coat for dry cleaning May it slowly fall away

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May my soul not dwell in anyone for too long

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Just stepping in for a moment and then stepping out Let’s overlook it for each other Let’s understand just a little

pg.60

Dark body Lovers in the heart

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I couldn’t be a lover for a long time

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When I stand by someone’s side My fingers bend Like the hands of a Lego figure Always ready to clasp

**

Wanting to have a loop, I often overlapped my right and left hands

pg.66

In this world, difficult tasks, walking between dreams, remain as homework, and breaking away from a familiar life is not easy

pg.68

The moon constantly swaying as words break apart. A ribbon fluttering in the wind. A swaying posture. Rest where the floor gives way. Shadows beneath the eyes. A sudden leap. The lie that I love even unseen things covers me. An old tree consumed by moss. I count the lives that will fall. I can’t count on my fingers, I keep sweating, and I miss every time. Time shakes me off and moves away. By moving its smooth legs. Hair slipping through non-existent fingers.

pg.80

Behind the curtain, I found lost yesterdays. How many dreams has the pillow endured? Solid clouds and soft nightmares pile up at the head of the bed, and even if I vigorously shake out memories, the pillow doesn’t become plump. It doesn’t swell. The paths I’ve walked sink deeply and never return.

**

pg.110

When I’m in pain, I sometimes think about where the pain comes from. Like a tumbleweed rolling on the ground and getting stuck in a puddle, where does pain fly from to leap into my body? Or, like the dangling wires of an abandoned house, who is flipping the circuit breaker to find the veins of pain? There might be people who say they’ve heard enough stories about pain. But pain is not something to be known; it is a present sensation, thus eternally young. Pain can also evoke the mind’s desire to separate from the body, and by clearly setting up the mirror of death at its end, it makes us contemplate the other side of life. In other words, ‘pain’ might be a passage that the individual (I) opens to the outside of the individual, and a dialogue with that outside. The world is already filled with ‘me,’ connecting only through pain, and the sensation of ‘not-me’ that is confirmed only through pain, we write as poetry.