Part 1 | About Those Good Times
Another story
Coffin Bay
Worship
Hand
outside
anyone
Like in a dream
biased tree
exit
Days of the Refrigerator
Sagalsi
long hallway
To i
Sheprela

Part 2 | The Belief That You Can Be a Round Fluff
While playing
round earth
umbrella
Summer Beyond
there is
Mutguk
cheerful face
Time remaining
cage
Until the stone speaks
On the piano that no longer exists
Sweater Days

Part 3 | Mean Time Between Failures
A room like a bag
zero
Your poinsettia
Government officials
Push
orchard
Us outside of us
Speech in my room
MTBF
Methods
mostly
Milk in June Afternoon

Preface | The Story of Silence - Yoo Hee-kyung

I feel it in your nonexistent arm pillow
The feeling of being alone

This collection of poems begins with a story about “the day we first met,” and flows to where “the last time that called us “us” ends.
As the poem unfolds, we experience time gradually moving away from “the day we first met”.
We become “eternally decaying, holding hands tightly” on the day we first met.

From the day we first met, you told me stories every single day.
What courage did it take for us to hold each other's hands and sit in the park in the bitter cold all night, holding each other's hands so tightly?
I listened to the story quietly.
We repeat ourselves over and over again, becoming the expression of that time.
I've heard it over and over again.
Just like how I was afraid of bears but still loved holding my teddy bear.
(…)
―The "Other Story" section

The day we first met was probably good.
Otherwise, we wouldn't be who we are.
But at some point we stop being ourselves.
Every time we call ourselves we, we wear down and disappear.
Either because of irreversible events or simply because time passes.

There may come a day when I will finally be able to say this.
“I used to be close with you.
I knew you very well.
I remember the scene where we giggled while looking at the fingerprints imprinted on all ten fingers.
Actually, that's all I remember.
“I can’t believe I’ve ever met you.” The simple truth that we cannot be ourselves forever is clothed in poetry and presented before our eyes in a form closer to the truth.
Because poetry cannot be created without that vivid and unfamiliar feeling, that ‘sense of being alone.’
Only after I sensed being alone, only after I sensed being alone, could I laugh silently.
“Sitting in the shade of a tree that doesn’t exist, in the shade of your nonexistent arm, under your nonexistent pillow.”

When you become a face that knows fear

Everything is terrible
Because the most terrible thing is that you are
You lie down and fall asleep
So that I can wake up in the next life
―The “worship” section

As we go through life, we face all kinds of fears.
Fear of the world, fear of being alone, fear of growing up, fear of discrimination, fear of facing the truth, fear of threats to one's survival... In some ways, living is fear itself.

Words and images that evoke fear, terror, and death frequently appear in Kim So-yeon's new poetry collection.
Kim So-yeon writes about “the fear of the hot summer when you have to get rid of the seething things to make your wish come true,” about “me who would have been better off abandoned but is secretly going crazy little by little,” about “wild dreams” “opening my forehead,” and about waiting for “me, huge and terrible like a tidal wave” to wash over me.
The perception of such horrors becomes even more terrifying when combined with Kim So-yeon's characteristically calm and cool voice.

But on the other hand, Kim So-yeon may be avoiding such fears or facing them head-on without truly being afraid.
This is because Kim So-yeon is a poet who uses the scene of “cute chicks turning into scary chickens and running wild in the yard before being slaughtered” as a metaphor for “it was good.”
Kim So-yeon says.
“The face that knows fear” is “the face I most want.”
In that sense, Kim So-yeon is a poet with a precious aesthetic sense that finds beauty in scary things.
As it happens, he writes:
“I am writing poetry with all my beauty. / Putting the sound of death into the sound of killing.”

About the one who listens to the heart

At the back of 『To I』, there is a preface titled “The Story of Jam-Jam” written by a junior poet, Yu Hee-Kyung.
This is a writing that includes a portrait sketch of Kim So-yeon that Yoo Hee-kyung saw and experienced, as well as a chronology of her life from her childhood to her debut to the present day.
Kim So-yeon, as seen by Yoo Hee-kyung, is a person who “listens to the heart.”
A person who “does his best in things that he feels he must do.”
And even though many things in the world change and we sometimes change our appearance, we are still poets.
Through the affectionate prose written by a close junior, readers will be able to get a closer look at one side of the human Kim So-yeon.