Today, we were reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in our classics class and in the hallway after I try to apply the teachings because that morning, my brother and I woke up to red sirens blaring and speakers announcing that North Korea had fired another missile southwards, presumably towards Seoul, so I am thinking about the soul and death and how near destruction really is in our daily lives, and my heart beats again after I call my family and check on my brother, “Hello?” and sometimes even the voice of someone familiar is sufficient enough to stop a worrying war.
Yejun Chun writes from Seoul, South Korea, and studies at Yonsei. His works have been published in The Academy of American Poets among other places.