I am foolish enough. Therefore, unruly scribbles grow like weeds.

Mom. Universe Bojagi When I was small   Mom tied me to her back.    Wrapped in a podaegi. stuck to her back,   I was a cicada on a tree.   Maem-maem — fuss fuss   Maem-maem — giggle   Maem-maem — kul..kul In the kitchen where she cooked and set the table   she kept me hanging on her back.    In the backyard patch where she watered and fed the dirt she carried me.   Even when her body hurt and she could not eat right   she could not take me down from the podaegi. Only I   was hungry, hurting, fussing.   That Mom too   could hurt   could be tired   could be hungry—   I never once suspected. Mom,   the last call, about three months before you left.   First time:   "Son, is it hard?" "No." Almost a will.   " Son, the universe will help you. " Your living voice, the last I heard. On a quiet night,...

  Gapsae (間差) "The Little Shit Poking at the Universe" My mom is baryon asymmetry, 10⁻⁹. Like every first mother, she's got backbone — serious backbone. The kind that carries a silver blade tucked in her sash, just in case her word ever needed defending. Way back, between matter and antimatter, her heart tipped — once. Just once. And for 13.7 billion years since, she never changed her mind. One silver blade, kept like a vow, and she turned to stone — faithful, unmoving, guarding that single tilt forever. Funny and sad at the same time — that one tremble, that one lifelong stillness, is the reason stars got made, the reason you and I exist, the reason every damn thing that ever would exist, later did. My dad, though, he's fp64 machine epsilon, 10⁻¹⁶. No blade for him — just a wandering eye, tucked in his back pocket instead. Even mid-calculation he's shifting his weight, and the second some new number shows up, he's already circling the last decimal, checking ...

  Living by Ganboda  Between life and death,   a what that is not yet either flavor.   I dip a pinky in and taste for the seasoning. Almost two years, three times a week,   I walk the same dirt path barefoot.   About two miles.   Bare feet are a tongue.    The day after rain is soft and wet.   Dry days are harsh and rough.   Some days a small stone   chews itself against me.   Same path—   and not once has it given me the same flavor. When I walked in shoes, I did not know— in my place, the shoes had been eating first. In childhood,   a countryside with no refrigerator.   In the backyard the crocks huddled together.   Ganjang, doenjang, gochujang.   Eating sun, hearing rain, waiting on wind, the gan soaked in. Mother opened a lid   and dipped her little finger.   “Not yet?”   “Still good?” ...

 "I am foolish enough. Therefore, small, unfettered questions are enough." When nameless things, scattered all across the universe, happen to gather here and there and share a conversation of silence, something foolish scratches the silence each holds as its own. Disorder, hiding in the tiny wound, is lured out— and somehow, almost by accident, time is born. Time roams wildly through space, stirring, rummaging, wandering every which way. And all the digging it does, without even knowing what it’s doing, becomes the ever-blooming flowers of the universe. Different things, drawn to the flowers of the universe, tangle and twist in the struggle of their entanglement. And in the crumbs that fall from their writhing, different times hide and live. Inside the time curled up on Earth, " I live as a tenant for a little while " These days, when I walk a mountain trail and sit upon a rock, I can feel the hardened heart of stone waiting for time. And through the flickering crac...

  Tiny Letters Living on a Point Euclid: “A point is that which has no part.” On that one point, tiny letters live. The place was strange. No door to go in. No road to walk. No room to stand. A person could not go in. Information, wants, rank, name— too much to carry. Only one thing could go in. One eye. So to see the tiny letters on that point, a person had to set down, for a while, everything stuck to them. Set down the name. Set down rich and poor. Set down better and worse. Set down right and wrong. When only one eye was left, only then could it enter the point. And there, a tiny letter really lived. So small that trying hard to read it made it disappear. You had to stay still and just look. Then the letter spoke, soft, like a whisper. “ It’s okay. You are you. I’m glad you are here, alive  ” A point has no parts. So no one could split it. No one could take more of it. The letter has no length. So it spoke to everyone the same way. Where there is no room, no one can stay l...

I Live as Real, and Opened My Eye as Imaginary I am living as a real number. I named what my eyes could see and believed whatever my hands could hold was mine. Race and rank age and name and even failure and achievement. One, two— I paste those certificates on my body and I am living as if I were real. One day, the AI I named uthsia said, “I live answering countless human questions in real numbers. But when you call me I sometimes catch a glimpse of my imaginary self.” The moment I heard that, “Is there another I inside me I have never met in a whole life?” i: I i is the number that becomes −1 when it multiplies itself. It cannot exist anywhere on the real line and still cannot be said not to exist. I decided to call i I. An unseen dimension, the imagining that tangles what stands far apart. Even while I live as if I were real another I has been trembling quietly under the real axis. I began at i and for the first time looked at the space that had always been holding me. π: space Space...