"Mid-80s Memories of a Kid Living on a South Korean Army Base" by Trish Broome

Mom is sitting cross-legged on the hard kitchen floor, slicing cabbage and green onions for kimchi, covering her mouth as she laughs. She’s watching 7-year-old me in the living room, lip-syncing to Madonna and Whitney Houston, holding my Walkman like a microphone, grabbing my shiny Michael Jackson glove suspenders, pretending I am the next winner on Star Search. My brother, who is two years older, is practicing taekwondo with G.I. Joe action figures. A few feet away on the couch, dad’s holding a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, watching a scary VHS tape he rented for the weekend. Mom is still angry at him for showing us The Exorcist, but that’s how we spend quality time together. To be together. The year before the 1988 Seoul Olympics, we leave with mom for America. There will be no more walking off base to open street markets where vendors sell made-to-order spicy rice cakes, or giving my allowance to that elderly Korean lady who sells packs of Juicy Fruit gum from a broken hand basket. I will never again squat on a dirty public bathroom floor, or be taunted by Korean school girls for being a “mutt.” My brother and I will miss the walk to school, past the movie theater where we saw Return of the Living Dead, with other kids whose future is also unknown. No more origami classes or writing our names in Korean. Dad will stay where duty calls, while we move to a city in Virginia nicknamed Bad News. Heaven is no longer a place on earth. We are no longer together. ————————————– Trish Broome called us from Sykesville, MD. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems