하삐

Happy birthday, I miss you. How are you doing? 잘지내세요? 지금 it’s been a while since I’ve seen you last. I’ve grown up a lot and I’ve come to consciousness about the ways in which America has changed you, and dad, and everyone. It’s overwhelming to think about sometimes.

After you left Korea

McDonald’s,     an ideology 

I ate 12 big macs in one sitting

the boxes piled up at home 

met your friends at the mcdonalds on western to plot and scheme for the day

We visit your grave every year, pour warm yummy mcdonald’s coffee on the grass below your tombstone

Feels like shampoo in hair 

Smells like your Toyota 

Smells like the early 2000’s Galleria market getting a flat tire the car breaking down,, 

dad crashing the car dad getting into a fistfight, Halmoni holding the other guy back

the brother who didn’t pick up the gun

Hoping to retire on a pension or two

큰할아버지 owns the neighborhood

he doesn’t fix anything, yet somehow still gentrifies it 

stealing your dad’s labor and time and dreams

McDonald’s, now more than an ideology

He starts calling it my store my community my people’s hard work being burnt down

The brother who did pick up the gun

The community shoots one of their own dead because of anti-Blackness, anti-Latinx racism, classism, US militarism, Park Chung-Hee, the mandatory military draft, the trauma of the Korean war, hypermasculinity.

he fell from the rooftops

no one died on the fucking rooftops

The Container Store that laid you off while you were recovering from surgery, you hadn’t missed work more than 3 times, the manager knew you had cancer and still fired you…

You hadn’t missed work more than 3 times, I’m gonna cry, you had cancer, it wasn’t left on bad terms, you almost passed out the first few times because the work was so overwhelming

 my manager was really understanding

But but they fired you and called it a “voluntary resignation”

My mom interjects to point out that means you can’t get unemployment benefits

You take a business trip

as a census worker, driving all over California because you’ve perfected your customer service and what you call “manipulation tactics” into getting people to answer the census. 

Until now, I didn’t realize how dangerous the job could be. 

You park your car, 

A white man is angry and yells at you to move away from the curb outside his house, this is the house you’ve been assigned to.

You say  “oh, of course, I’m so sorry. Let me move my car right away.” You tell me that it could’ve escalated if you hadn’t kept your cool

aging as growing as healing is an understatement

understand angry pain violent pain sad pain heart

wells up inside of you and one day you name it

But with you maybe it’s started to make sense because within you is 우리 us within us is something that will never die is something that needs to die is something that’s killing us every day is Happi’s toes falling off is a quadruple bypass surgery is refusing to go to the doctor is the only healthcare is not getting sick is tuberculosis from the conditions of the garment factory is “making it” is still not being considered shit and worthless because you’re a woman (of color)

           isn’t that implied?

constructing a neoliberal woman of color: a former berkeley student in a $4500 studio apartment: how do we make women of color into girlbosses and feel proud for working at an office at Amazon while also reinforcing racial capitalism, anti-Blackness, misogyny? 

All I know is that the only relationship with the University I want to have is a criminal one my grades are for my mom and dad

우리 is hope. It’s proof that we’re still here despite years of back-breaking labor and betrayal and class exploitation and McDonald’s ideology and Yoshinoya dates and social mobility and becoming soft and buying a house and getting nice dinners and not having to choose between toys and groceries but it’s not like that because 우리 is what allows the ruling class to justify their exploitation that they did their time and now it’s your time 우리 is trusting someone who doesn’t care about you. 우리 is a patronizing labor union that tells you you don’t know what you’re talking about when you ask them to let you have some agency 우리 is being told that you should be an alphamale at work is being humiliated as a fun activity 우리 is ours but somehow it’s becoming theirs too but 우리 is Sizzler and yelling at you to 나와 놀자! to come out and play from your balcony is being happy to have a shitty apartment 우리 needs to live and die 

and i don’t want to kill it anymore, and even if i did i would ask you first

do you want to be an accomplice?

If i love you, am i an accomplice? 

Am i an accomplice if i love you? 

And i’ll say

all i ever wanted to be was an accomplice to you