Michael Namkung

Ten months ago, on the longest day of the year, I set an intention to stand at my bedroom window and write every day for 365 days, and share with you along the way. After the two hundred second day, I stopped. The slowdown had been coming for weeks, as I felt the middle of winter creep closer and closer. Words began to flee my mind in droves, as the hangers-on started to decompose, disintegrate, fall away.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published w o l r i w d n o l s i r e f n d t a h a g s t l a l r e l n i s e u a r i g m p w p r s n i b a a m n e g n - n t e t o n a g l i e l h i l r h i s r t e l c o e e f n h i o e s a r e d n e n i u d o s m r g n g n n l m o o d e g l o l s p o s r i n t i s, s f t n g h k f o h k i e o f e i n r, i n i r g c i g c r l i e p s s o w m o d e r o f t d w a n i s n i e i m l e n s e t t d t l s i h t i a e e a r e o n p t n...

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published I hadn't noticed the second leaf dark green and fully formed how slow it has grown like a new desire towards the first one the dying one how reverent the approach so quiet so as not to startle it comes to sit side-by-side to listen, or witness.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published when words don’t come I stare blankly and wonder about space— how much there is between us and between every particle of every atom—they say we are almost all space, yet no one seems to have enough

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published While everyone writes she moves her pencil back and forth, a soft swishing that opens a valve and infuses her hand with speed and with something else, rising fast.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Inside in flight a sudden light fell across my eyelids. I awoke, blinked in the brightness, turned my face to the cabin window, its shade pulled down half-way like a sleepy lid drawn over a blazing eye, its shining gaze fixed on me, warming my skin, flooding my retina with light. I shone right back without squinting, me and the sun eye to eye.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published He was our leader long ago, our captain —which is to say, something like a father to us, a gang of boys with a dream— even standing still he had swagger, carried himself like a king and so we made him ours.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published How to Win play all the games and score your points while remembering how small and alone a point is .

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Regeneration Dad is on the phone and do you want to talk to him, my mother asks on the day after Christmas. After our hellos he asks when I got in, breaking the ice. I say late last night and just like that we end the silence of years. He tells me how he lost his balance and fell and watch out for peripheral neuropathy and diabetes—all the boys in the family have it, he says, Uncle Paul, his father, too.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Two I take a seat in the waiting room beside an old man with soft eyes who flashes me a quick smile as the classical number fades out and a woman’s voice comes over the speaker to say that was Johann Sebastian Bach, her pleasant tone a match to the music and the posters of smiling people wearing fancy frames.