I try to remember leaving my shoes in the pit and stepping up onto the linoleum in my socks. Slipping over and down again onto the tile in the bathroom. Turning on the TV, sitting down on the blue and green corduroy, now partly crushed. Resting my socks on the naked wood of the ancient rice chest. One channel. I flip anyway. I try to think of the light blazing first through the outside east window and then through the tiny square one above the stove until it is refracted through the eneven surface of my drinking glass from Mexico. A spoon beside it, waiting until I walk to the fridge for the carton of soy milk, return and pour it into the glass and then reach up into the cupboard for the cylinder of Quik. Three heaping spoonfuls and then the clank clank clank of metal against glass. The squeak of the high-backed cushioned chair in front of the computer, the tones and sqeals of the connection. Sunlight filtering through the opaque inner window, glass ornaments hanging there to catch it, change it into something more brilliant than can exist in the brown haze hugging the city. I try to remember the soft down billows resting over my naked body. My arm looped over the cool bare log at the head and light peeking through the door to wake me. Books on each of the tables on either side. Opening that old chinese cabinet, the scent of cedar luring me in. The brass handle claps against the brass plate when I let the door go. Inside, books I've bound in paper and photographs illustrating my story. All the books on the shelf: ones I've read, ones I'm going to read. Ones I was planning to read. The follow-up to Skocpol's state theory of social revolutions. An examination of war as ritual. An exploration of environmental factors on the emergence of dominating cultures. More about Pu Yi. Is my cactus still alive? An odd-shaped basket in the corner where newspapers collect. The old rice bowl I bought for Dave to keep the little kyool in, the one he doesn't really use. It was more for me, I guess. Every day I cleaned something just because I hated knowing I'd have to do it eventually and the build-up would be worse whenever that was. Gloves and chemicals and music. I try to remember standing in the tub every Monday morning scrubbing every space between the tile, scrubbing harder on that mildew that was there before we were. It disgusts me. The tub is narrow and when I squat down to scrub the bottom surface, my hips nearly miss the sides. I'm good at this and I can sit so close without getting any suds on me. I try to remember the water backed up in the drain in the floor that never unclogs despite gallons of Korean Drano. I leave it there until it finally seeps into the plumbing. Then I put the drain lid back over top and seal it in plastic wrap to prevent sewer odor from contaminating our house. I try to remember watching the thin plastic swell and suck in response to changing air currents in the pipe system. I remember wearing my slippers and buying that basket out there on Kangwha Island to keep them in. I try to remember Dave in that spare room sitting on the blue stool, legs crossed, working on one of his games. I see him at the computer with a pile of cd's beside him. Radiohead. James. Cause&Effect. More Radiohead. He rarely sits on the couch by choice; he only does it if I'm already in the chair. I try to remember us in front of the tv, our dinner crowding the surface of the old rice chest, he saying to me how good it is and it's the best and we're both Mmmm-ing because it is good and I say for the millionth time: I learned to cook in Korea! He says, "Thanks Sweetie." And I say, "You cooked it." 'Cause, really, he did. I see him lying in bed with a book on his chest, and then rolling over after closing the book and placing it onto the table beside him. I remember seeing him from my place in the black desk chair, his shoulder and side rising and falling softly as he sleeps and, oh, he looks the best then, he looks so at peace, so comfortable and I wish that for him deeply because he is continually worried about survival, his future, my happiness. He is curled like a small child, sleeping that way in the middle of an afternoon when he has rolled aside the heavy curtains made from fabric I got in the big market. Now the sunlight brightens the room, sparkling on the shiny flowers in the wallpaper. A blizzard of dust is revealed. I see him there, the short hairs on his head lit like a halo and his perfect flat feet stacked and bent behind him. I can't resist that, no, and go mold myself to him, aligning my breathing with his so we can be the same. I try to remember this.