In this dark night, someone stands at my window,
stares into my room. Who is it?
Not a word, only heart-piercing eyes,
someone is there to protect me. Who is it?
The night’s pitch-darkness wakens all things. My secrets,
unable to hide, flash in the blue phosphorescent light.
The many nights, when I sweat from crushing anxiety,
someone stands at my window, keeps watch over me.
O, whoever keeps a watch over me every night,
by dawn, when I finally slaughter all my guilty thoughts
and open my window, like opening my heart, then,
I see him fade away into the whitening darkness. Who is it?
Sekyo Nam Haines immigrated from South Korea to the U.S. in 1973 as a registered nurse. She received her BA in American literature and writing at Goddard College ADP. She continued her study of English literature at the Harvard Extension school and poetry with the late Ottone M. Riccio in Boston, MA. Her first book, Bitter Seasons’ Whip: The complete Poems of Lee Yuk was published by Tolsun Books (2022). Her poems and translations have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Off the Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Anomaly, and Guernica, Common, Lit Magazine and Gulf Coast Review and elsewhere. Sekyo lives in Cambridge, MA.
