2:17 a.m.—the doorknob turns
"I’m hungry."
The whisper is tender, the breath scalding.
Juna—no longer a child, yet I still know that tremor.
Darkness bleeds from the hallway into the room.
A shadow slips to the foot of the bed.
Without a word, Juna climbs under the blanket.
When the back of a hand grazes mine, chill and fever mingle.
I curl inward."It’s still here."
Fingertips pause over my T-shirt.
The spot—hardened after the children left, never having leaked a drop of milk.
Juna presses, feather-light.
A contact no heavier than breath, yet it arcs like electricity.
I bolt the door inside my mind, but it is already too late.
The tremor begins at the fingertips of a child who never suckled, yet who always called me Mom.
A severed skein, or a daughter without a birth certificate
Twenty-two years ago we were three.
Junhyuk loved me; Yujin loved Junhyuk; I lay in bed with both of them.
Instead of a contract, a single sheet of paper was taped to the headboard:
The child belongs to all of us. One name on the paperwork is enough.
The first child grew in Yujin’s womb.
My uterus was too scarred by miscarriages to open again.
I handled every moment of postpartum care.
A baby who fell asleep sucking my finger instead of a nipple; the first smile given to me.
Yet on the birth certificate the word Mother bore only Yujin’s name.
Officially, I was the “aunt.”
Each night the baby sought my breast while Yujin slept.
No milk came, yet the baby was content.
In those hours, I was the true mother.
Pink socks inside a second womb
The second child grew inside me.
On the delivery table the pain arrived sharp as oxygen.
Across the ward, Yujin held the first child; Junhyuk sat in the lounge, silently weeping.
Why are you holding our child?
Because I gave birth to her.
The baby had my nose right down to the tip.
While I was still dazed, Yujin named her first: Juna.
Junhyuk’s “Jun” with a meaningless “a” tacked on.
I gave her a pair of pink socks; Yujin put them on her.
When we came home, life tripled in weight.
Three bottles, nine nipples, four kinds of porridge.
Whenever the children cried, “Mom,” we glanced at one another—no one knew which mother they meant.
Yet at night Juna sought my nipple.
While Yujin slept, Juna crawled under my blanket.
The faint tremor of her fingertips: though she never drank, that tremor alone made me feel pregnant again.
Song-i, Min-woo, and the third child
On the fifth birthday a third child appeared.
This time Junhyuk’s sperm met Song-i, whom we had met in a “co-parenting club.”
Song-i gave birth to Min-woo and declared, “This child is all of ours.”
Yujin objected; I watched for cues.
In the end we agreed to raise him with four parents.
Every time Min-woo called “Mom,” all of us answered, “Yes?”
Still, we were happy.
The simmer of bottles, the smell of rice cereal and soiled diapers, the breath of children falling asleep against our breasts—all felt like love.
A name that vanished beyond the window
When Min-woo turned six, Yujin left first.
She had met a man who wanted “a house without other people’s children.”
The name written as Mother on the birth certificate left with her, and the first child followed.
Junhyuk moved with Song-i and Min-woo to a new apartment.
The second child stayed with me.
Juna still says I gave birth to her, but suspicion clouds her eyes.
A mother without a name—or the first child’s mother—
That was all that remained.
Nights that erased us one by one
Two months ago Song-i took Min-woo to Canada.
Junhyuk no longer answers calls.
The second child left, claiming he was “going to find Dad.”
I am alone.
Dust and stale beer.
The note on the refrigerator is still there:
The child belongs to all of us.
Now there are no children.
Not even the word Mom remains—only someone’s “first mother.”
That night, the tremor returns
Juna opens the door and enters.
No longer a child, but a twenty-two-year-old adult.
Yet the tremor in her fingertips has not changed.
A hand resting on T-shirt fabric, a distance never bridged.
Only breath is exchanged.
"I’m hungry."
A lie.
What is hungry is the tether that never broke for twenty-two years.
I close my eyes.
On that tremor I still hear the word Mom.
But no milk will flow; it cannot.
With nothing but a tremor we recognize each other.
The sediment of desire
Polyamory sold us the fantasy of everyone together.
But parenting is possession.
Each bottle, each name, each portion of love became someone’s share.
The one who gave the most lost the most.
We said we loved one another; in truth we wanted dominion through the children.
Yujin over Junhyuk, Junhyuk over me, me over both Yujin and Junhyuk.
The links of that chain soiled the children.
It was never love; it was fixation.
And fixation, in the end, left me—abandoned—with a single tremor.
No milk, yet the spot remains firm.
Upon it, after twenty-two years, Juna still calls me Mom.
Dawn wind seeps in.
The door lattice creaks.
I still feel the tremor of those fingertips.The spot is hollow, yet unyielding.
Mom.