She shows me a picture of her favorite Korean actress. Cry beauty, she calls her. "She cry, she still look beauty!" she says.
Design by Christy NaMee Eriksen. Cloisonné metal pin, 1" wide.
This pin was inspired by the poem Korean Drama. It is available as a pin + poem pack here. Full poem text below.
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Korean Drama
by Christy NaMee Eriksen
I am Asian and I believe in love, which is why I watch Korean dramas.
When the Filipina nurse at the hospital found out I was Korean, she told me she loves my language and I could read between her lines. I was using a walker then and I was connected to a pole on wheels, so she pushed the pole as we shuffled inch by inch down the hallway talking bout which of our favorite broken characters deserved to be loved.
And when Lori found out I was Korean she had me type the name of my favorite dramas into her phone with one hand while she painted the nails of the other. She's gonna look them up in Vietnamese on youtube later. She shows me a picture of her favorite Korean actress. Cry beauty, she calls her. "She cry, she still look beauty!" she says.
I wanna be a cry beauty. I wanna be so wholesome, people stab me in the front. So lovely I only talk in landscape. Such a force of wonder I knock em over, "just thinkin bout you."
That one b*tch talking smack all over our homeland and I'm still nice to her.
Her mama teaching her the traditions of relentless dreaming, trying to give her everything she didn't know she needed.
Still, there's a place in a Korean drama for a good breakdown. You can drop a cupcake on your shirt or your losses can cut you back or the man who never loved you still doesn't love you and you can cry about it. In a Korean drama, you can cry about it for a really, really long time.
Even Opaa will cry about it, cause he's sensitive af. He got a million dollar job, but if you've got a monologue, baby he got time. He don't bring you flowers, he brings your *grandmother* flowers.
Yeah, ain't no love like street noodles at midnight love. Ain't no love like follow you up a thousand stairs cause that's the language he's sorry love. Ain't no love like a clever tongue, except a silent one, which is why Opaa will do love long before he says it. Ain't no drama like your drama, which is why he'll cross an evil plot for you. He'll cross long lost twins, amnesia, a war and two ghosts for you.
Don't we all get a little separated at birth?
Won't we all face an illness that might kill us in our own love stories?
Am I not going blind now, reading you on my fingertips, the softest focus?
When I lose my memory, I hope you'll find me in the subtitles. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Hmong, Khmer, English. Hope there is room in every language for the things we believe in. Hope I can find a home in your episode: no tale too twisty for us, no love too absurd, no reunion too futile. Hope you, too, can be found in translation.
