(Author’s note: Getting there. Enjoy!)
© Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
On Every Street
by Miles H. Rost
I turned down what used to be a busy college street, one that was full of bars, chicken shops, all the places a student in Korea would go.
I looked at how transformed it was. Gone were the karaoke houses, the pizza shops. Now it was condos, small boutiques, and a grown-up veneer.
Each place I remembered seeing Soong-Mi, gone.
Each memory of her smiling face: fading.
She went her way, I went mine. To meet one last time.
I laid a rose at her memorial, a cross on a corner. It’s her face I look for…on every street.
Music and Fiction 
Just beautiful. That sense that not only has the cast changed, but the scenery too is deeply disconcerting
Everything changes. I’ve learned this the hardest way possible: Culture shock. Thank you for stopping by, Neil. And I promise to hit your blog very soon.
Gone but never to be forgotten. A touching tale indeed.
Here’s my story!.
Thanks, Keith! It’s always one of those stories that, if you ever were an expat, can always talk about or go back to.
Even when they have gone, we search in our hearts and wander are lives like a ghost, in the hope of meeting one.
We all have our ghosts we wish to speak with again. But we remember and move on until we ourselves disappear in body (but not in mind and spirit). Thanks for stopping by, James!
Miles, this is beautifully sad. Well done.
As an old man once told me: “Write what you know”.
I remember people more than places, perhaps I’m not alone.
Each of us have our own things that we focus on. In my case, it’s places and the connection of people to that.
A touching story. Cities and societies change with time. Soon-Mi had made her decision, as did you. It is time to move on for good.
When I wrote this, I was more looking at this as an encapsulation of what an expat feels when they return to a place they lived and left. It’s that constant struggle.
Such a soulful atmospheric piece.
That seems to be the vein in which a lot of my writing has been going as of late.