me and my goldfish sang a song for appa

one saturday evening, my goldfish played Moon River on the record player. i hummed. hummed as i looked down at my buttered toast. toast that looked isabelline and smelled like umma’s cloying perfume. the river i saw from my window hugged the electric blue clouds, the winds, and the softness from the dancing saffron tangerines appa planted in our garden. i sang the line, Two drifters, off to see the world; there’s such a lot of world to see, and my goldfish would sing, we’re after the same rainbow’s end, waitin’ ’round the bend and i looked back at the window if appa was there. if he was there with his friend, the other drifter. i chewed on my buttered toast. isabelline butter: the fairy lights to a dark cave i inhabit inside of me. dark cave with no beauty — an empty flower pot. my dark cave, the empty lantern, brightens up when i put my feet inside the lukewarm river. when the river becomes my second appa. and i draw my appa’s face, my appa who left to see the world, with a wooden stick on the sepia sand. his eyes, his lips, his nose — his orange-shaped face. i think of him, and i guess my goldfish thinks of him too as it rinses its pelvic fins inside the river, and we think of him over and over again as we sing the Moon River over and over again. we sing to the moon. and the blonde moon would sing to appa, who is on the other side of the world over and over again.

on my way to the swimming pool

i think of my grandfather, who created a pool

out of a watermelon. and he called it his

museum. a creation of his very own. i

remember the ten black seeds he pulled out

from the amaranth surface of the water. seeds

that were bigger than the size of a five

year-old girl, me. and we would sit inside the

small hole, trying to feel the coolness that

arose from the tips of our little feet.

grandfather, appa, and me, would talk about

the clouds, umma, and sometimes her deep

fountain eyes. and looking down at the

reflection at my own eyes, her eyes, i jump

from a leaf and dive into the watermelon.

before the sun goes down. before i spent the

whole summer in my bathing suit. and before

the leaves stop budding through the holes, all

the holes in the world. they knew i wouldn’t

be jumping and splashing and jumping and

splashing if there were no leaves. using the

white ladder in appa’s garage to climb down

from the gigantic fruit, he would ask, and

how do you pronounce it? water. melon.

watermelon. i said. he said the korean word:

subak. Subak isn’t it? and i nodded. nodded

as if i never knew this was the last question

he would ever ask me. years later, i nod to the

scheele’s green summer leaves on my way to

the swimming pool in the thoughts of my

grandfather. my grandfather, who had an

entire museum dedicated to us.

Author: Claire Kim

Claire Kim is a rising high school junior from California, studying the wonder of creative writing. A lover for all things, Claire primarily enjoys writing poems and short stories. When she is not writing, she likes to doodle on leftover origami papers while listening to music.

artist: Derrick Breidenthal

Derrick Breidenthal has been a professional artist for over 15 years. His work is connected by techniques of gentle blending, diffusion, and illumination. he focuses attention on rare colors and conditions, Resulting in oil paintings that convey powerful beauty. Upcoming projects include a large collection of nocturnal paintings that will debut at a solo show at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art in January of 2021.