Jjimjilbang at 3am

Itaewon, 3 AM the Dragon Hill Spa still open still administering heat to bodies that have nowhere else to be I pay at the window they hand me the shorts, the towel the orange plastic locker key the ritual of temporary belonging to a room of strangers everyone here is waiting for something to loosen The haenyeo documentary plays on the television in the corner I watch women dive into water colder than intention and surface because their lungs require it I think: yes I think: that is what this is The steam room holds what the cold releases the heat draws out what I've been carrying since 6:47 on a southbound train since the flowers on a Gangnam curb since I pressed play on your last October and couldn't stop We sweat out everything but the name the heat draws out what the cold drove in I'm on a mat in Itaewon at 3 AM my number is forty-seven the mat doesn't ask me anything the temperature is 80 degrees and I am 37 and the difference is the only math that makes sense tonight and I don't lift my face the jade floor holds me without wanting anything back we sweat out everything but the name we sweat out the name There's an old man asleep on a mat his face perfectly still, perfectly elsewhere and I am jealous of how completely he has vacated I have been trying to leave my body since 6:47 and it keeps refusing to excuse me keeps needing water, keeps needing heat keeps insisting on its perimeter its tiresome thermostat Somewhere above us: Itaewon the bars closing, the last calls the delivery bikes cutting south the city running its late-night protocols and down here, under the stones under the heated jade floor: just breathing, just sweating just the low-frequency hum of infrastructure and grief that hasn't found a form yet grief still in solution in the 80-degree air The steam room holds what the cold releases the heat draws out what I've been carrying I am dissolving slowly into the same salt water everyone else is We sweat out everything but the name the heat draws out what the cold drove in I'm on a mat in Itaewon at 3 AM my number is forty-seven the mat doesn't ask me anything the temperature is 80 degrees and I am 37 and the difference is the only math that makes sense tonight and I don't lift my face the jade floor holds me without wanting anything back we sweat out everything but the name we sweat out the name You never came here with me I asked you once, last spring you said the communal nakedness made you feel watched and I said: by who and you said: by whoever I am when no one's looking I think I understand that now I think I understand the wanting to be held without being seen I think that's what the jade floor is for and the only light is fluorescent and we are all here anonymous, horizontal, sweating in the secular purgatory of a building that charges by the hour for the privilege of dissolving We sweat out everything but the name the heat draws out what the cold drove in I'm on a mat in Itaewon at 3 AM and the jade floor knows and the man asleep on the next mat knows without knowing anything about you we sweat out everything but the name The locker key is orange the towel is scratchy and insufficient the haenyeo on the television dives again and again coming up for air in the time it takes a person to vanish I will go to the river after this I will go to the Han River bridge I will go where the water knows what the steam has been trying to tell me since I came in here carrying everything and couldn't put it down