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A Stranger’s Touch of Blessing

In the zenith of Manhattan midday hour, the air is thick with summer haze from bus fumes, yellow cabs, trucks, and whatnot, while the pedestrians are rushing down in all directions on the sidewalks. As I stand on the curb waiting for the light turn green, I hear a thin soprano from behind, “hello, pretty?”

I don’t turn around thinking that a woman is talking to someone on her cellphone as many do; besides, I am not a pretty one.

To my surprise then, I see a woman approaching and standing next to me. She is a tall, middle-aged lady in her spiffy white slacks and a canary-yellow jacket. Her honey-blond short hair looks neatly coiffed as if just done at a hair salon.

“Pretty,” she smiles standing like the Statue of Liberty and askes, “Can you guess how old I am?”

I look at her hiding my surprise behind my slow and gentle smile.

“Hmm…” I tip my head from one side to another, giving her a look of genuine consideration, remembering that she is the lady who just called me pretty.

“I’d say no more than fifty-five, Ma’am,” I offer a number less than my estimate.

“Thank you, pretty. I am seventy years old … Can you tell?” She beams and stands on her tiptoes, stretching her height.

Realizing I’m a year older than the lady, I say, “No, Ma’am, certainly not!”

“Thank you, dear.” She flashes a toothy smile. “I’m attending a geriatric health conference right there at Hilton Hotel. They want me to deliver a speech about my excellent health and longevity. I was picked from a handful of seniors with good genes!” She elaborates

with an air of justifiable pride.

“I am impressed. Congratulations!”

“You see, I was raised with five siblings, not drinking or smoking, only with a healthy diet! We all have kept the good habit, and it has kept me in great health!”

“Wonderful indeed, congratulations!”

“Thank you, dear! Oh, the light just turned green, but here, hold my hand! I’ll give you my good health and energy!” She extends her long slender fingers as if ready to throw a spell on me.

Surprised again and moved by her kind offer, I slip my hand into hers when she gives it a quick squeeze, not unlike a burst of blessing, and turns away waving a goodbye.

Too dazed by what just happened, I remain on the curb waving and watching her cross the Avenue of the Americas. Upon seeing how thin and frail she looks from behind, I strain my neck watching her, regretting I should have held her hand and walked with her; but thankfully, she is trotting on like a pro.

Relieved to see her roll away safely through the revolving door of Hilton I sink onto my heels, thinking, perhaps, only perhaps, the lady needed my blessing as much as she wanted to blessed me. At the changing pedestrian light, I start to walk, admitting to myself that we all can use the blessing, including those who are already blessed.

Written by © Therese Young Kim
Photo Credit: Konrad Monroe

"천송이 목련화 (A Thousand Magnolias)," a book of poetry, stories (in Korean except for three poems), and images.

The Diving Sun (Ember of Love) by Therese Young Kim

The Ember of Love - Meditation in the Sun

Dear My Distinguished Web Guests:    It has been nine months since the Coronavirus pandemic took us the prisoners of epic tragedy around the world, which feels more like nine years.  But time rushes by as always and we are here like homecoming heroes from a war that is still raging. It makes us wonder what it is to have a normal life in the way we used to live, like breathing the air without thinking of it, or enjoy the sun shine on our bare faces, or walk around without distancing the strangers.   A staggering number of deaths have occurred every day, patients dying all alone, separated from their loved ones.  Feelings of pain and grief are universal while it can be self-healing with passage of time, as the memory of love ripens as years go by.  I know because I was there once, albeit a long time ago, under different circumstances.                          ∞∞∞    When the sun is golden, I, like a sunflower, would breeze out of my cluttered apartment for the day. After fussing over the breakfast, I would check the email, make a call or two before getting dressed. Then I would pack my oversized laptop in my wheeled luggage with padded layers to protect from the bumpy Manhattan sidewalks, together with a small bag stuffed with my leggings for a gym visit.    My laptop holds the world of my poetry, stories, and a novel, ‘Nayoung’s Journey,’ that were written years ago and still being edited or rewritten on and off. Some were conceived while I was roaming around, listening to the rhythm and cadence of the city crowd and the melodious sounds of foreign languages brushing by my ear.                                                                                  ∞∞∞

Therese in the Sunlight by Konrad Monroe © Therese Young Kim

To Be Beautiful Again

The store is bright with florescent light, showering shelves of designer perfumes, cosmetics, medicines, toiletries and whatnot.      An elderly couple walk in. The frail, stooped man appears to be in his early nineties as he walks clinging onto the arm of the foot-taller woman in her late seventies. She is a blonde with her hair teased up like a cotton candy. Remnants of certain contours suggest she was once stunning, although her face has sagged into ample pouches around her chin and neck. Heavy swirls of rouge and uneven purple lipstick appear to have been applied in poor light.      The woman’s leopard hat projects a slightly decadent chic. Her black-leather boots have two-inch heels and creep tightly over her thick calves, revealing the lumpy knees below her tight buttery- leather black skirt.      The man’s over sized overcoat suggests he has shrunken considerably over the years as he stands before the sales counter with his lady, who is looking up at the sales clerk with a great anticipation. They seem glued to one another, straining up the neck rather painfully. ”What d’you want, ma’am?” asks the sales clerk, peering down the couple.

Photo From the Collection by © Therese Young Kim A Lithograph 140/140 by W. Sellier

”I want a Lancôme lipstick!”

     The sales clerk considers the woman’s purple lips and then pulls a tube of lipstick from the Lancôme section, removing the cap and holding up the exposed stick between her red-enameled fingertips.

“Is this the color you want, Ma’am?”

The woman narrows her eyes, and nearly sniffs the lipstick.

     Looking exasperated by having stood for a considerable moment on his unsteady legs, the man turns his thin neck painfully toward his lady, as if he were dying to know the lipstick is the color she wants.

”HOU-nee, eez this leap-stick what you wan--?” From such a frail looking man, the voice sounds surprisingly loud.

     Ignoring his question, the woman continues staring at the lipstick, seemingly suspended in indecision or in a reverie of some kind. The old man waits patiently in silence like a loyal dog, as if all that mattered in his remaining life was to find his lady the perfect lipstick.

     Finally, she flutters her eyelashes overloaded with black mascara, as if she got a solution, opens her thin purse, and fishes out the old tube of lipstick. In her trembling hand, she brings the tube’s purple nub near the tube in the clerk’s hand and firmly announces.

”I want ex - AC - tly the color of this one!”

”Ma’am, this is in fact almost ex - AC - tly the color, except that the company has changed your color a little over the years.”

     The woman tips her head to the side. Her man leans and moans into her ear, ”HOU-nee, she tells it’s almost ex - AC - tly the same color!” He then watches her purple lips longingly, waiting for assent.

     He waits. And he waits, aware that she is determined to remain beautiful. A glimmer of hope lights up his blue eyes as if he was assured that there will be one more night to cuddle and be cuddled, breath to breath.

(Published in ROSEBUD as a Gardner winner, Issue 40)

By Therese Young Kim
New York, NY
Copyright © 2014

Behind the Blinds

     The autumn sun is sinking behind a jagged Manhattan skyline like a huge Halloween pumpkin bleeding into a plum-pink twilight. Standing with a cup of honeyed jasmine tea behind my window on the top floor of a ten-story redbrick building, browned with the time, I’m listening to the seamless procession of Chopin’s Preludes streaming from my CD player in. The music, so elegant, languorous, and suffused with the colors of French impressionist paintings, I feel I’m in heaven in my cluttered studio apartment.Behind the Blinds

     Just when I drank up the bottom nectar of the sweet tea remaining in the cup, and the music changing into a waltz, I notice a man moving behind a window of the high-rise twice taller than my building—taller, but it looks one dimensional and artless on its modern façade. There is another building separating us, which is a story lower than mine with a quaint-looking water tank, which looks like a plank turret standing on one side of the roof. Diagonally behind that tank, I can only see him in fuzzy profile from a distance, but clearly enough to recognize the man’s physique.

     His large picture window standing somewhat parallel to my smaller one, I remember seeing him a few times behind that window before. Built stocky, he has closely-knit thick eyebrows under a crown of dark bushy hair over massive shoulders ― massive, but not in an athletic way. I imagine he may have patches of mossy chest hair that extend to the back of his shoulders and upper arms.

     I now see him slowly pacing around the room, his frame a bit hunched forward like a bear looking for prey, clasping and unclasping his hands as if consumed in some sort of dark scheme. As I feel his intensity spilling on me through that distance, I narrow my glare over him like a sly fox. Dressed in a pair of dark baggy slacks and a loose shirt without a tie, I presume he could be a divorce lawyer, an accountant, or a theatrical director.

     Before I know, he stops pacing and bends over a large briefcase on the floor, and pulls out what looks like a brown folder. As if he were aware of being watched by someone over his shoulder, but not once looking out the window, he moves ever cautiously. If he did look in my direction, I don’t think he could detect my small frame snug behind my partly drawn flimsy curtain. After a bit of hesitation, he sticks the folder under his armpit and walks to an adjoining room, which appears to be a bedroom with its own window.

     In that room, I notice a small figure seated in an armchair. By the brownish long wavy hair flowing over the side of the chair, it is a young woman. He now walks to her, bends over, and says something. The woman nods, gets up from her chair, and walks to the window. She rolls down a blind, walks to the living room, and rolls down that window’s blind as well.

     Although I no longer see them behind those closed blinds, I know that she is not the tall lithesome blonde I used to see in that apartment over the past six months or so. Every once in a while I’d notice the lovely blonde when she was there. She used to move around the dinner table behind the window, entertaining guests, occasionally waving her bare arms while she talked to someone, just like in a silent movie. Whatever the occasion, the couple usually had about six people around the table under a large chandelier that glowed in multiple hues, reminding me of a small cruise boat floating on the Hudson River on summer nights. I wasn’t even aware he had blinds then, since no one ever rolled them down.

     But tonight, there is a new lady in that apartment ― a shorter brunette with a fuller figure ― and the blinds are lowered as if all that had been going on with his blonde was to be obliterated by his new brunette, who hurled down the blinds, like the curtain failing at the end of a play. All I see now is the pale metallic sheen from the closed blinds, reflecting the frailty of the night, of the human psyche, mocking me and my Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu.

"Behind the Blinds" was published in ROSEBUD #59 in 2015.  It also appears at Tuck Magazine link: http://tuckmagazine.com/2017/04/05/fiction-8/)

By Therese Young Kim
New York, NY
Copyright © 2014