Su Cho

Aubade with Metal Spoon

                                    for Michelle Cho

My sister never forgets
to store a metal spoon
in the freezer before bed
in case she is let down
by her monolids
on weekday mornings.

We check our eyes
to see what kind of day
we are given. But we still love
the symmetry of our faces.
Both our left eyes like our mother
and our right eyes a plush double lid.

But to be safe, she holds the cold spoon
against her eye, the edge we use to cut
into steaming kimchi dumplings, soft tofu,
acorn jelly, against her lid. She counts
to thirty, asking if anything changed,
if all this is worth it.

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Su Cho lives in Milwaukee, where she serves as Editor-in-Chief for Cream City Review. You can find her work in Poetry, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Southeast Review and elsewhere. Her essay “Cleaving Translation” was the winner of Sycamore Review’s 2019 Wabash Prize for Creative Nonfiction and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. You can learn more at www.suchowrites.com or follow her on Twitter @su__cho.