Stories Of The Han

I could hear him from the walls He cried for days alone and didn’t leave the room My mother asked me to to bring him rice porridge on a tray I knocked, he opened the door and he gave me a gentle nod I never seen my father so broken My grandfather had died the previous week and my father did not attend his funeral He would later tell me that he couldn’t He said that had he left to Korea, he feared that he would lose his business and he would endanger our livelihood At age 12, I didn’t believe him I could tell he was scared to face it He didn’t want to accept the death of his father When I was four, I remember my grandparents visited us and lived in our cramped apartment in East LA My grandfather would burn incense and chant his Buddhist mantras He would invite me in and have me sit on his lap and he gently swayed me to sleep My grandfather was kind When he died, I knew that something changed inside my father He became colder, he became easily agitated He was quick to reprimand There was something unsp