Subtitled Love (Action Movies)

Bang!

Boom!

Go on without me!

Save yourself!

The thin layer of fleece can’t stop the chills that scale up my back

Like a minefield, goose flesh explodes across my skin

Hairs stand at attention and droop slightly, in silent salute

Darth Vader didn’t make it out till the end alive…

Heartbroken, I chew popped maize by the mouthful

Greasy kernels disintegrate by my saliva

I stuff confidence and bravery in my mouth,

Yet as it sloshes down my throat,

I vomit it back, upchucking lament and cowardice

I can’t swallow back my screams

You see, my body is at war with itself

But that’s the price I pay,

When, for 124 minutes, my eyes are glued to an IMAX screen

PG-13 labels allow for restrained carnage, though characters still meet their grisly ends

Bullet-ridden bodies are pumped to the brim with lead, and crimson life trickles down

Body parts are blown off and my ears are too, by defeaning machine gun fire

Metallic cylinders spew like a hose, splotching red drops across torso and chest

Corpses of good plots are abundant on the soaked battlefield, making a cornucopia of parts Dr. Hollywood can use,

Yet despite the rehash of plot lines and special effects, I am swept up by this spectacle

But I never enter these war zones alone,

My grandmother was always at my side

Cheering with me when the protagonist survived,

Uttering a prayer of sadness when the antagonist died,

Clapping profusely when the credits rolled by

But it was in 2013 when I found out the truth,

I saw my grandmother watching a screen filled not with war,

But of drama and romance, subtitled in a language I knew, though the characters on screen spoke a different dialect

Then it struck me: my harmoni did not like action movies

Her past affirmations, covered thickly by her Korean accent, was done out of love

Not knowing English, she sacrificed her favorites, to spend time with me,

Because you don’t need to analyze a bloodbath,

So I have seen how violently she loves me,

Slicing and torturing potatoes to feed me,

Firing up praises to God, shaking the foundations of heaven with explosions of adulation and prayer on my behalf,

She shoots looks of love that pierce through my hardened skin, making me bleed happiness

Yet even after being hit with this fierce, un-spoken love,

I don’t go past a “thank you”

On the quest to bridge the language gap,

I am Tom Cruise, deeming this mission impossible

John McClane letting my monolingual habits die hard

Sylvester Stallone: I’m boxed in my ignorance on this rocky path

But now in 2016, I’ll reclaim the tongue I have cut

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난 배울거야