‘She Wouldn’t Be Able To Come To You So Often If She Were Alive’*

from Kim Hyesoon

It’s when I’m washing, usually, the dishes,
it’s when I’m lost in a heat of suds
and I’m looking out the window, not staring
mind you, not fixed on anything but not really
seeing, it’s then, it’s then I feel her. I feel her
hand on my shoulder, and now I think of it
the first time was when the kids were babies
when I was delirious and brushing bottles
and teats, decontaminating and weeping into the sink
standing in my piss, and there, her hand on my shoulder;

this first touch was a light touch
not on account of her being dead of course,
she is no longer a wisp of a thing, but
on account of her not wanting to shock
me, on account of her bringing me back
into myself…