This Sentence, Right Now

The author recently moved, a process that always leaves them contemplating the impermanence of their living spaces. After packing away belongings, the empty rooms hold echoes of past lives, prompting reflection on how so much time was spent in spaces that were never truly owned, but merely borrowed. These transient abodes were filled with the remnants of life: borrowed money, worn blankets, a single Tylenol, a rusty seesaw, a cassette tape of cicada sounds – a universe contained within each temporary dwelling.

Reading Huh Soo-kyung's poetry while settling into a new home brings a sense of connection to the poet's own experiences. Lines like "Eternal. Nonexistent. The green of summer. Heavy clouds passing over it. (...) People who clean their homes for a long time for things not yet wet with water. Sick days." resonate with the author's feelings of transience and the quiet acts of preparation for an uncertain future. Huh Soo-kyung's self-description as "an orphan in my existence as a poet" suggests a life lived with a sense of detachment, perhaps always preparing to leave, yet deeply engaged in the act of creation.

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Eternal. Nonexistent. The green of summer. Heavy clouds passing over it. (...) People who clean their homes for a long time for things not yet wet with water. Sick days.

The author contemplates the nature of writing, suggesting that some sentences are born not from a desire to write, but from a premonition that they *cannot* be written. In this light, the author's own sentences become their unique address, a personal marker in the flow of time. Reading Huh Soo-kyung's work in a newly cleaned home feels like returning to a familiar place after a long absence, finding a strange comfort in the everyday routines that, despite their inherent compromises, offer a fleeting sense of eternity.

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As a poet, my existence is an orphan.