Winner of the 2023 Birdhouse Prize!
Hannah Lee is a NYC based Korean-American poet who processes her world through poetry. She is a graduate from the CUNY Queens College MFA program, and was an editor at Armstrong Literary. Her work has been featured in Encounters Magazine.
Sparrow
The botanical garden in my neighborhood is free
until April. A frigid Sunday morning and a bad
NCIS episode later, we find ourselves walking
through grass peeking through patches of melting
snow, and the bare gnarled branches reach not for light,
but warmth. My mother sits to rest and I can’t help
but see the same patches of snow, as if melting through
her hair, streaking past the past. And the past is here,
I can see it in her eyes as she looks up to those same gnarled
fingers reaching for warmth like her own.
She has been complaining about the cold as of late.
I can’t remember when she started aching and walking
slowly, I can’t help it. I’ll pull a muscle now.
We walk down the streets trying to buy soy milk and warm
roasted sweet potatoes. I want to see what she sees
in those trees that line the park. The bare trees with
a sole bird perched atop. She mentions the bird to me.
she wonders about it, not aloud, but I hear.
The other birds fly about and flitter
towards the ground in groups, playing, eating, living
their small bird lives. I envy these birds
that know more about her thoughts than I.
