The Bench at Platform 3

Dear Kyung-min,

I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. I don’t know if you’ll tear it up the moment you see my handwriting.
But I have nothing else. Just this card, and a heart that finally understands what it broke.

I am sitting at the bus terminal in Pyongyang, shoulders hunched between strangers, my coat too thin, my tears not worth hiding anymore. Around me, people come and go—faces filled with purpose. I have none. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Not the silence. Not the way the world shrinks when you realize you have nowhere left to go.

He let me go. Just like you said he would.
No final words, no goodbye. Just a door that closed and didn’t open again. And now I see how foolish I was—believing in promises that were never meant to be kept, chasing something I thought was freedom, only to find myself more lost than I’ve ever been.

I think of Ji-ho waiting at the door.
I think of Haneul’s tiny hands holding my scarf.
And I think of you—your quiet strength, your patience, your love I couldn’t see when it was still in front of me.

I don’t deserve forgiveness.
But if there’s still a place for me—on the floor, in the corner, outside in the cold—I will take it.
Not for comfort. Not for pity.
But to be near what I threw away, and to learn, slowly, how to be whole again.

Please tell the children... tell them their mother is trying to find her way back.

Yours, if you’ll have me,
Yeon-seo