“I was sifting through an email
account that’s over twenty years old to make space in its storage. I found this
email that my dad wrote for the first time in his life, after I got my heart
broken. I was moved, and heartbroken again, imagining him typing this up in
[South] Korea, away from his family; seeing that I never replied; realizing
that I had forgotten all about this email. I wrote this poem to belatedly
acknowledge and fill my gaps in memory with these moments of tenderness, in
which he was often clumsy but was nevertheless at his sincerest.”
—Emily Jungmin Yoon
After My First Breakup, My Father
Writes His First Email
Emily Jungmin Yoon
With his two index fingers—“the
eagle method,”
as one says in Korea—he broaches
everything else:
the recent death of a Korean
actress, lessons
from the life of a sportswear brand
chairman.
Then, a turn: I don’t like to use
the word “love.”
It never feels complete.
Away from him, me in my new
country, everyone
and everything is in love: I love
your shoes, I love your hair, this,
that, him, her.
When had my father and I said the
word
to each other?
How many times had I, picking up
his call,
ended it in a rush, bored, running
to declare love to my boyfriend?
My teenage passions, precious;
my father’s loneliness, not my
responsibility.
My “wild goose father,” flying back
and forth
to see a closed room, only
petulance left
at the door, as I preened privately
for nonexistent boys.
How easy it was to forget this
man’s sensitivity,
his love for music, that he took
saxophone lessons,
coming home to an unlit apartment.
A taciturn man, who sings alone.
Who, when years later asked
what instrument he likes listening
to the most,
said, the human voice.
Copyright © 2026 by Emily Jungmin
Yoon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 28, 2026, by the Academy of
American Poets.