the first bird, before any other; one note, then the silence again, longer than the note.
새벽—dawn
時 靜 夜the kettle climbs through its small register of pitches and lands on the one that means it’s ready.
아침—morning
日 光 時commute light through plane-tree leaves — the same green it has been for forty years, and somehow new.
a stranger’s umbrella, half-folded, sticking out of a public trash can like a wing not yet given up on.
the third email of the morning, and the first one that requires me to think; the cursor blinks twice before I answer.
the thirteenth email of the morning. somewhere between the third and the thirteenth I stopped reading them as letters.
낮—noon
光 日 時the office is quiet two minutes early; everyone has already left in their head.
a bowl of kimchi jjigae, the spoon resting on the rim — the only color of the whole afternoon arrives at the table.
a magpie on the gutter across the street; motionless for ninety seconds, and then suddenly somewhere else, with no transition.
오후—afternoon
日 靜 時a 7-Eleven coffee, lid still on; the steam finds the small hole and gives up before getting anywhere.
a bookmark, left at page 142, where it has been since Tuesday; the page corners curl toward each other.
저녁—dusk
夜 光 靜a streetlight reflected in a small puddle that shouldn’t still be there; tomorrow it won’t be.
a window across the courtyard with a single lamp behind it; somebody else is also at home, and the same dusk falls in two windows at once.
in the kitchen, a cat’s tail disappears around the corner of the doorway; the cat is gone before I’ve looked up.
slippers, mismatched: one mine, one not mine. I have not worn another person’s slippers in seven months.
the third light comes on across the courtyard; this is the hour the building admits it’s night.
밤—night
夜 靜 日the refrigerator hums in a key one semitone below the room. it has hummed in this key for the eleven months I have lived here.
a bus card, face down on the entry table; tomorrow it will be picked up without being looked at.
it is past midnight and not yet tomorrow; the day has slipped its banks but has not picked a new shape.
an empty noodle bowl on the desk; a single noodle, alone, draped along the rim.
.
haroo.day — one day, painted in watercolor.
printed on jangji paper, 2026.