I go on living as I always have,
nothing new—
only the old longings filling the days.

They said three days would be enough,
yet for some reason
the tension only deepens.

My breath grows short for no cause.
The mind circles, busy but going nowhere.
So restless it would be better
to have heard nothing at all.

At the far edge of the news that reaches me,
there is only sobbing—
an endless anxiety breaking open.

Just when life had begun to feel plain,
I wanted only this:
to return to the ordinary.

To let time pass
like a stream flowing,
asking nothing.

Then, at last, it bursts—
a thousand years of waiting
falling from the sky
as a sudden rain.

— TaeHun Yoon

Afterword
This poem confesses what I felt while my wife was away for two weeks in New Jersey, caring for our second daughter after childbirth.