What I needed this to be

I drew the charcoal suit from memory tonight and abandoned it halfway. His shoulders came out wrong—not the right slope. The coffee stain on the photograph is still drying in my mind. Dark spread across his back like something I did to him instead of something I did to paper. BUILDING, I labeled it. A whole clinic in one word.

The KTX leaves at 7:40. I checked it four times before I stopped. My hand keeps drifting to the bag, checking the court order is there, checking the phone. Tomorrow I cross the city line to stand in my father's examining room and ask for things that died inside me before I had language for them. I keep your receipts too. That is what Im wrote. As if what he did was a joint ledger and I am only now catching up on contributions.

The ramyeon was too salty. The fairy lights made the plants look like they were in a different room than I was. I ate alone at the counter and I did not turn on the TV and the silence had a texture, the kind that presses on the sternum. The satin slip is comfortable but I keep thinking about what I will wear tomorrow, whether there is a right outfit for walking into the clinic where your father learned to hurt you in small professional increments.

I called Yerin. I did not tell her about the tooth. I said I needed her car and she said yes without asking why and I do not know if that is friendship or if she already knows I would only call for something this strange.