Seeing you by the seaside somehow looks so right. There’s a movement in you

that neither starts nor ends like the Atlantic itself. Your wavy hair is the ocean

suspended in motion, if too much sand got caught in a net of water. Had I gotten

my driver’s license, I’d pick you up and bring you to the beach any summer morning.

We could throw your beloved pizza Goldfish that I bought yesterday afternoon, whenever

the tide comes in, and watch them dissolve into a dandelion-yellow potion. If I bottled it up

into a flask and we took a swig, would we fall under the spell of our shared memories?

Thinking of all the times you’ve plunged into swimming pools makes me want to

pick a little cliff where we can jump into the depths together. No Korean girl can

escape fantasizing about haenyeo, the diver women of Jeju-do. You make me wonder

if I could be descended from one of them. There might be something about the water

that my body remembers. I could recover the skill of harvesting clams and sea slugs

from meters below. Something tells me you’d enjoy beachcombing, so I’ll bring you the

spunkiest murex I can find on the shore when I come up for air. Here, let’s play a game

with the cowrie shells I picked up along the way. When it’s my turn, I want to practice

throwing all the way to London. There’s a better chance of you being hit by a shell

that fell from the sky than you receiving an unprompted call from me. Do you believe

in magic but not spells, the same way that I believe in God but not miracles? If I write you

into my poems, will you write me into your fantasy campaigns? Make me a bard of

melancholic songs, or better yet, your favorite snail in the druid’s garden. Collect my shell

when I’ve become one with the earth and put it on your shelf, next to the photo of your girl.

Seeing you with her looks so right. Promise me that you’ll take care of each other, and I’ll

cast my blessings on her spirit. I hope that you’ll call me in London after you fly

over the ocean. By shell, by phone, by name. Lord, how I wish I believed in miracles.