on the way to the swimming pool
WRITTEN BY CLAIRE KIM
i think of my grandfather, who created a pool out of a watermelon. and he called it his museum. a creation of his very own. i remember the ten black seeds he pulled out from the amaranth surface of the water. seeds that were bigger than the size of a five year-old girl, me. and we would sit inside the small hole, trying to feel the coolness that arose from the tips of our little feet. grandfather, appa, and me, would talk about the clouds, umma, and sometimes her deep fountain eyes. and looking down at the reflection at my own eyes, her eyes, i jump from a leaf and dive into the watermelon. before the sun goes down. before i spent the whole summer in my bathing suit. and before the leaves stop budding through the holes, all the holes in the world. they knew i wouldn’t be jumping and splashing and jumping and splashing if there were no leaves. using the white ladder in appa’s garage to climb down from the gigantic fruit, he would ask, and how do you pronounce it? water. melon. watermelon. i said. he said the korean word: subak. Subak isn’t it? and i nodded. nodded as if i never knew this was the last question he would ever ask me. years later, i nod to the scheele’s green summer leaves on my way to the swimming pool in the thoughts of my grandfather. my grandfather, who had an entire museum dedicated to us.