spongebob prism
Originally uploaded by nyresolutions.
Peeling from her sleeping skin, Park tunneled through the pixilated glass, finding herself somehow more substantiated as she walked down a hallway, one hand heavier than the other. A pink metallic suitcase. Her suitcase. But those were not her shoes. This looked like the day she left Seoul; off to Los Angeles to bilingually act in a small movie of immigration, family and the American dream. She was discovered at Christmas, just five years old, in the pulsating toy section of a giant department store quietly calling for her mother in English. She had wanted to do this every year since her mother disappeared. Somehow she believed her mother would be more likely to find her in an Americanized space like that, instead of the street market or the store around the corner. Her mother had been an actress too, on location in Korea when she had fallen for her driver. The man who had raised Park alone, after.
He did not come with her to America that day, offering her without question into the custody of the American studio as if he had always expected to lose her too. Her father sat next to her in the taxi, the suitcase between them. Big signs and star-less skies filled the windows until the car stopped. He steered her head through the doors of Incheon airport. Where were her braids? Her eyes searched the lofty space for a reflection. There between the pillars something stirred in the air conditioning vents. It could not be, but there it was, a little white flake wavering down on the hurried shoulders of the cramped businessmen in line ahead of her. This was just the first. Her father did not notice the shiny bustling space was slowly turning into a frosted postcard wonderland. Just behind the metal detector hid a big fat tree, a shivering squirrel between her crunchy feet. Park was struck silent, unable to articulate to her father or the mannered stewardess what had happened to the weather. He crouched down and looked into her eyes. She did not hear what he said then, but now she saw his eyes were frosted over, kind but white. Walking towards the exit, he half-waved as she passed through the detectors, dwarfed by the white tree.
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