The Taste of My Aunt

​Yeon Myung-ji

​My aunt, who loved farming and sowing seeds in the field,

gave birth to seven children and created a myth in a small village.

She loved the dancing light while wearing her shimmering black hair tied in a bun.

​She, who preferred soju to the smell of flesh, had wrists thinner than a single butterfly in the thicket.

​Even at an age approaching a hundred, her knees collapsed while she boomed orders over a bottle of soju, and at the family’s words to just get treated for a moment and come out, suddenly, she ended up trapped in the womb of a nursing home.

​On a day when the order of words ruled the night of the nursing home,

a tiny itch mite dug a burrow into her skin, making her suffer from itchiness every night; she had to yield her shriveled heart as food for ghosts.

​To her, whose sleep was terribly itchy, sedatives had no effect.

Even as she scratched her whole body and cried out, the voice of salvation could not cross the night.

Trapped helplessly in scabies, my aunt died.

​In the nursing home where she only meant to rest for a moment because her knees hurt, her love stopped.

Irresponsible words sat on empty chairs, saying that her advanced age was the only pure truth,

shaking her extremely rare death.

​A hellish space lying upon pain, even now the itch mite must be crawling around like a returning triumphant general.

​It was a June where my aunt’s clear, ringing voice—saying she would not grow old—stained the dining table very briefly, yet lengthily.

I am Yeon Myung-ji, a poet from South Korea. I began my literary career in 2013 with the poetry journal <Gasibi>. I have published the poetry collections <Sitting Like an Apple> and <Where Is the House of the Word “I’m Sorry”>, the e-book< Seventeen Marco Polo Sheep>, and the travel essay< Step by Step, Walking the Camino de Santiago>. I have received the Tolstoy Literary Award, Homi Literary Award, Cheongsong Gaekju Literary Award, Aviation Literary Award, and the Bronze Prize in Poetry at the 2025 Literature Asia Awards. My poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. I continue to write with passion, exploring life, memory, travel, and the human spirit.