There is a narrow place
between a breath taken
and one remembered,
where footsteps seem to linger
after the walker is gone.
That is where the silence stays—
not empty,
just waiting.

We call it Han:
a sorrow that won’t explain itself,
like a coal kept alive
under cold ash,
warm enough to matter.

We carry it in the chest,
in rooms we pass by
and never open,
in words we start
and leave unfinished.
It is what longing leaves behind—
the feel of a door
not quite shut,
a prayer said only halfway.

Still, even there,
where grief grows tired
of holding its own weight,
something shifts.
A thin line of light
finds a way in—
not victory,
not escape,
just a change in the air.

Every silence has its time.
Every wound, its small opening.
Han waits there—
not to be solved,
but to change.

And when it does,
it comes the way morning does:
slow, unsure,
hard to argue with—
a light rising
from the very place
the dark had been.

Can’t you hear the raging waves?

– TaeHun Yoon