sea spray

The water comes up to briefly circle around their ankles before receding, dissolving into a bigger part of itself. Under a grey sky, Joonki watches the waves roll into each other and the gentle rocking of fishing boats that comes with it, their coat and scarf around their neck the only things protecting them from the frigid winter air.

When they were a child, their mother’s skin always ran cold from working to the bone, though they stayed in the embrace however long they could regardless, the appearance of their mother in their home and the following affection a rarity. In the middle of December, the ocean feels like her; as quick to come as it is to leave, the opening and closing of the apartment’s front door in the middle of the night when they weren’t asleep but their mother thought they were. The space of their childhood apartment had been small, but the emptiness felt as if it stretched far beyond those thin, peeling walls. Not even Emile’s mother could fill their mother’s absence—a piece of the puzzle that was so close but never fit quite right.

Their gaze follows a boat pulling up a net with a heap of wriggling fish trapped inside, as desperate to go back into the sea as Joonki is; only, they could return if they were let go, and Joonki cannot even with the freedom they have now. In their head, they can see their mother’s weathered hand picking and pulling at a hook caught in a fish’s lip, lines of dark red going down her fingers. She kept strong grip on it to show the creature to a younger Joonki afterward, despite how much it struggled in her hold. Joonki can never remember this part correctly—their memory is a little frayed at the edges after all the years that have passed—but they think there was a smile on her face too, shadowed by the sunlight falling behind her as they sat together on the fishing dock.

The carp that the next door auntie had given them just earlier lays still, spilled guts and blood staining the cutting board and the sink a dirty grey-red. Joonki’s knife sinks easily into its flesh and they make quick work of the fish, dark filets laid out and bones ready to use for something else after mere minutes. They’d always been more precise than their mother’s adequate, shaky knifework, but this is the way she stays with them when the sea is too far to travel to.

Next come the daepa and radish; clumsily cut pieces squeeze their way beside the fish on the small space of the cutting board. Their mother had always been better with those than they ever were. Joonki recalls only being able to watch once or twice as their mother cooked in their tiny kitchen, the two of them being in the same space at the same time scarce in their childhood, but can remember many more times walking to a bowl of stew on their lone table. It’d always run cold or warm depending on how far or close they’d come to catching their mother returning home.

Soon, the scent of warmth and spice billow through the apartment as the stew boils. It’s a welcome change to combat the lack of insulation. Since they’d stop being human, their body temperature had become more difficult to maintain—but cooking, no matter how inadequate on their part, always helped resolve the issue, at least momentarily.

In the cramped space, close to the bed they’re sitting on, Joonki catches Guan Yin off to the side. Guan Yin forever enshrined in their one-room-apartment, Joonki sees the irony: that Guan Yin is always there now when their mother rarely was in their childhood, yet their love to both is acted on with the same fervor and frenzy.

It takes forty-five minutes for the stew to finish cooking. Fresh incense and fruit lay in front of Guan Yin, part of Joonki’s daily shows of devotion toward the goddess. Though the strong aroma from the stew in front of them is taking over their senses, they can still smell the incense burning close by. While eating, they think of the temple and its followers, then of their own meager offerings spread across the table for their mother’s spirit to feast on during days of ancestral worship.

Joonki takes a spoon of stew into their mouth, bites of carp and radish, and imagines their mother across the table, even if their apartment isn’t the same as back then.