The Indicator x The Student: “family dinner: still life in silence and salt”

we never quite learned to surrender

ourselves at this table, but coped

with our desperation to know each other

by surrounding ourselves with rice

and plates of 반찬 we’d season

with grains of salt spilling from our eyes —

and this salt would spread quickly, like grief

always does, trickling into red pepper paste

and flakes of anchovy skin, salt desecrating

the soup we’d double-dip our spoons into,

so when metal met our lips,

salt would sting

and linger on our tongues —

but we would ignore the way sorrow fit

in our mouths and just say the soup’s a little salty

in place of everything we wanted to say

but swallowed.