🍶Geuripda(그립다) | A Tactile Poem of Longing and Warmth

🍶Geuripda(그립다)

The Scent Beneath the Cutting Board
In the hush of oil-tinted tile,
where gingko leaves once sighed at dusk,
your scent still drifts—
a vapor of fermented soy,
soft as broth curling over winter’s knuckle.

Time was not a thief but a sieve.
Through its mesh,
your voice—
wet with radish and honeyed root—
slipped into my hands,
warm once,
now cooled like forgotten rice.

My memory kneels
on the rag-wiped floor
where silence thickens like dough left to rise.

Every knock of the cutting board
is a heartbeat
that won’t echo back.

🍶Geuripda(그립다)

Where Warmth Refused to Leave
There was a kind of heat in her kitchen that didn’t cook.
It settled instead—on fingers, on thought.
A dull warmth, like the back of a cooling spoon resting against a cheek,
or the belly of steam trapped under rice cloth.

My grandmother didn’t speak much,
but when she placed her hand on my back,
I felt the entire room settle.
That was her way.

After she left, the kitchen stayed, but it lost its pressure.
Not gone, only changed—like a room that still breathes, but softer, more inward.
Sometimes I open her old spice drawer and the air folds in:
perilla, dried anchovy, a trace of sesame like a whisper caught in wood.

I used to think grief was sharp,
like missing a train or biting into something that isn’t ripe.
But missing her is round.
It moves like broth in a deep pot—slow, reluctant, and it coats everything.
It doesn't beg attention, only lingers.

There are days I step into her kitchen
and the floor cools me with a warmth that no longer comes from fire,
but from memory pressed into tile.
There are no recipes here.
Only remnants that touch back.