Kimchi

I don't know why
I have a hearty appetite for my
Korean kimchi.
Fermented cabbage seasoned spicy
Long salted pepper flakes
Garlic and ginger
And stinky fish sauce
When
I can't stand fish.
My embarrassing comfort food
Even before I can remember--
Embarrassment.

A present taste of something I loved
With my Korean tongue before
It adopted English.

Jars of pungent stench untwisting
For so very, very long.
I apologize with hidden humiliation.
But it sticks to me. Stays on my breath.
Though never enough to stir its aroma into
A face.
A reaching hand.
Fingernails to my feeding lips.
The scent of salty shape turning me toward--
then turning me away.
Tide to unmet tide,
A distant sea
Of whole beginning.
It's never coming back to me.

I eat it like it is
My last meal, or
My first.
Until
I cry hot tears
Down puffy pink cheeks
From almond eyes
Two years old and 30
Clinging to
The same hot tears
And not knowing why.

I eat it when
I am all alone. Lonely.
Abandoned of all else
Except, that spicy bowl and me.
Forcing my senses, unwilling,
To what came before.
Burning my belly, raw,
To the very empty bottom.
Eating me red as I eat.
Never far enough.
Never below the empty.
As if gorging a memory
Will give me
Access to it.
To something that loved me first.
Or perhaps not.
To something fed to me before I could feed myself.
Or perhaps not.
The empty bottom never turns to tell.
I eat as if it will.

I feed my children kimchi.
For myself.
To remind me that
I will feed them years past
Remembering my face.
So they remember my hands
Answering them over and over and over--
"Yes, I will feed you full."
Until,
They have had enough of me.
Enough of me to be embarrassed of me,
And never
Of themselves.
So that kimchi will just be
A stinky memory of their mother's familiar scent,
An open sea,
Tide to returning tide,
And nothing more.

For all the burning
Life of me
I don't know why I love to
Eat a past of me,
A growing-smaller-as-I-look-back part of me.
An empty distant bowl,
Always to the bottom, and
Never knowing why.