– Notice of County Appraisal

The notice arrived
like cold iron in the mailbox.

County Property Assessor—
a quiet envelope
shaking my aging eyes.

Forty percent.
Fifty-eight percent.
Seventy-five percent.

Numbers climbed
like floodwater after endless rain.

This year
another forty-seven dollars,
another three hundred forty-four—
small printed sentences
eating slowly from the table.

Ah,
I already pay double
at every gas pump
along my familiar road.

Who measures
the shrinking bread on the kitchen table?

Who counts
the empty spaces in refrigerators,
the mothers skipping meals,
the old men staring silently
into thin bowls of soup?

Who is responsible
for this slow starvation
wearing a necktie of economics?

Is this
the season of Great Inflation?

Or have we quietly entered
a second Great Depression
without trumpets,
without warning?

Fear walks among us again.

Not only through viruses
or ancient plagues—
not only Hantavirus
or the Black Death—

but through sleepless nights,
through unopened bills,
through trembling hands
holding receipts beneath fluorescent lights.

And still we ask:

Where is the Redeemer?

When will salvation arrive?

Will it come
through elections,
through angry speeches,
through promises printed on signs
beside crowded highways?

Or is redemption already swimming
among the people somewhere—
hidden in history,
breathing quietly inside tomorrow?

Perhaps
it already passed us yesterday
on a nearby street,

wearing the face
of an exhausted neighbor
still sharing bread.

— TaeHun Yoon, May 2026