Minyoung Lee
1. THE DISPATCHBack Here in My Dream, Over and Over Again
Memory tells me where to go, even though my mind tells me it’s my first time here. The familiar concrete steps, the choppy sidewalk, the clear ocean teeming with octopus. I push open the steel door, enter the underground mall. The shelves are stacked with discontinued childhood snacks but no one is standing by to sell them. The cold light reflects off the glass skyscrapers, threatening to wake me.
No, I feel myself saying. You have a story to follow, a mission to complete. Someone brought you here to find them, if you could only remember. I need to climb more steps, peer through the wild hedge, squeeze under this boulder, before my time here runs out again.
I approach a flock of crimson birds at the end of a trail, feeling your presence at the tip of each feather. I wake up, still savoring you between my eyes. Who are you, calling me each night, to chase you in my dreams? In the warmth of the artificial sun, the salty skin of the octopus, the colored sugar stinging my nostrils. I know you’re here, somewhere in my memory. I know you want me to find you when you bring me back here in my dream.
Over and over again, I look for you. Over and over again, I wake up before I do.
2. BUREAU INVENTORYPrint of snapdragons painted in watercolor
Taxidermied alligator head
Replica of Gog and Magog china dogs from Anne of the Island
Solar-powered bobblehead cat
Mardi Gras beads
The hard hat I used when I worked offshore
Scented candles
Fidget toy
Death Valley pupfish plushie toy
My first author photo
3. BIOGRAPHYMinyoung Lee writes fiction and essays in Oakland, CA. Her work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Electric Literature, Passages North, among others, and has been anthologized in Best Microfiction 2021. Minyoung is an alum of the Tin House Summer Workshop and VONA Summer Workshop. Her prose chapbook Claim Your Space was published by Fear No Lit Press in March 2020. Find her at https://myleeis.com.