The Architecture of Almost Home

In the photograph of winter's skeleton, branches weave themselves into prayer— each curve a question mark asking the sky: why can't I?

Mother, your hair falls like ink across hanji paper, cyclones of memory I cannot gather back into the warmth of your first embrace.

The branches know something about growing toward each other, about making doorways from empty space. I study their architecture, these natural arches that lead nowhere and everywhere—

Why can't I create a portal to a home?

In Seoul, grandmother's hands moved like these scattered strands, soft and comforting as clouds, weaving stories I've forgotten in a language that lives only in the hollow of my throat now.

The wind carries what we've lost. The trees catch what remains. Between their fingers, I am still learning to hold myself like someone worth coming home to.