​Valentine V

by Esther Ra

Photo Credit: Esther Ra

Long weeks of rain. Sharp, lashing winds. Then, out of nowhere: spring. I run past the law school, past the trickling fountains. The water washes the trees with a dappled glow, turning stiff trunks to a moving canvas of light. Sun-laden stalks of juicy green smile at me with their whole faces, creamy curlicues, freshly washed spathes. Among the peace lilies, my heart expands, unfurls, grows sunkissed and warm. I tramp through blades of wet sweet grass, listening to Korean songs about spring, cherry blossoms, and what love meant to me in the language back home.
 
At the end of the road, I reach the lake. It is like seeing a friend I have known all my life step down the aisle in her wedding dress — shimmering, completely transformed. The lake has been dry ever since I came to America, but after the slew of rain, it has opened like an eye brimming with water. Ducks make their home in its tears: their feathered bodies cut swaths of scattered gems across its surface. Spring has flushed everything — grass, leaves, flowers, and lake — with translucent light.
 
I think of Jonathan in the Book of Samuel, dipping his rod in honeycomb and bringing it to his mouth, how at sweetness “his countenance brightened.” I think of the jaded Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes, expressing how in wisdom the face of man “shines, and the hardness of his face is changed.”
 
Light and softness become possible in moments of safety. When I was young, my mother used to carry a hardness about her, an impenetrable armor with which she hurtled through this life and protected everything she found tender. Now, only after her health has diminished, her soul has reached a harbor of safety. Her face has softened. Her eyes shine.
 
But light and softness are also present at moments of breakthrough, of risk. A Black colleague describes how, in third or fourth grade, he was learning about U.S. history, and the smallest white boy in his class said to him — with such fierce and quivering intensity — If I had been there, I would have fought against slavery with all my heart. And how something broke open in his face as he said this, a sincerity so strong it was almost shattering.
 
I, too, shatter a little every time someone gives me permission to be soft. Like my sister, saying, You shine so much even in your sadness — I can’t imagine how beautiful you would be if you were happy. Like my friend, telling me gently, Your poems mean a lot to me, Esther. You mean a lot to me. A friend used to tell me that I can’t hide my feelings for the people I love: you light up when they walk into the room. When someone tells me they love me, it is a reminder to stay radiant, alive. Sometimes when I am laughing, I am running down to the edge of the water; I am dangerously close to tears.
 
In college, my favorite professor once told me I reminded him of spring. It is my favorite season, the one in which I feel most alive. I run down to the lake — once dry, now a source of new splendor. Its heart is brimming, and so is mine. There is light everywhere, as far as the eye can see.

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Esther Ra is a bilingual writer who alternates between California and Seoul, South Korea. She is the author of A Glossary of Light and Shadow (Diode Editions, 2023) and book of untranslatable things (Grayson Books, 2018). Her work has been published in Boulevard, The Florida Review, Rattle, The Rumpus, Bellingham Review, and The Korea Times, among others, and received awards including the Pushcart Prize, 49th Parallel Award, and Indiana Review Nonfiction Prize.

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