“Mom, Mom, Mom!”
My three-year-old races in, waving the phone I’d hidden under the bed. My husband is glued to a mobile game on the couch, and the toddler’s toy train has just sliced open my foot. In that instant I realize: even now, every inch of me belongs to motherhood. There’s no crevice left for the woman I once was. I can’t even lock the bathroom door—tiny fists hammer on the other side.
The Wallet Hidden Under the Black Bed
That night my husband came home late and fell asleep mid-snore. I slid out the tiny purse I keep taped beneath the bed frame. Inside: a single drop of perfume from a birthday gift last month, and a note.
“Unni, red lipstick still looks perfect on you.”
One flushed sentence. That’s all. Yet I traced the letters until the paper warmed in my hand. My husband has forgotten my birthday two years running.
Jin-ju’s White Lie
At my cousin’s wedding, thirty-eight-year-old Jin-ju in a dusty-rose dress welled up as the march began. Her shoulders—taut, defiant—belied the mother of two she is. During dinner she slipped into a stall and unfolded a scrap of paper.
Want to get away sometime? Just you and me—leave your number.
It wasn’t first love. They’d never kissed, never even held hands. He was merely a senior from a club she’d brushed past right before marrying. Now he spooned rice into his wife’s mouth while bouncing their toddler on his knee. Jin-ju crumpled the note, tossed it, retrieved it, tucked it into her pocket. In that second she confessed to herself: I’ve been living as if motherhood had swallowed the woman in me whole.
The Temperature of Secret Desire
Why do we keep cradling this sticky ache, holding our breath? After the kids fall asleep, I drink cold water at the fridge and suddenly feel the back of his hand on my cheek. In the supermarket I grab tampons, then spray a tester on my wrist—three seconds of illicit pleasure. Psychologists call it the taboo-desire phenomenon: the more forbidden, the sharper the outline.
But they miss one thing. Nothing is off-limits to me now—not because I covet someone else, but because what I long for is myself.
The Name of the Forgotten Woman
In the underground garage I sit in the car and speak my own name for five quiet minutes.
“Chae-won-ah.”
No echo. Only a child’s wail spirals down the stairwell. I bolt up, terrified it’s mine, but a stranger is already soothing her son. And I understand: I am a mother who still refuses to surrender the woman someone once adored. I simply don’t feel like dragging that truth into the open for my husband tonight.
The Sound Knocking on the Door Right Now
Even now I hear the hush of my husband easing the bedroom door ajar. Is he dreaming of a desire he hasn’t named? Or is he about to remind me to start tomorrow’s laundry? Before I turn the knob, I wonder—do you, like me, forget that beside the titles of husband and father, you were once a burning lover?
Tonight, what name will we dare to call each other?