Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: thoughts

  • About Writing

    I can’t think of myself just simply vanishing into the passage of time, becoming a tribe of the forgotten. I don’t want to leave this world without a trace of my existence. That is one of the reasons why I have been submitting my work to journals and my first poetry chapbook since last May. Before, writing was my soliloquy in which I wallowed myself away from the cruel reality where God was unkind, let alone people. However, things have shifted for me. Now, it’s different. This is a time of striking hard when the iron is hot. And boy, is my iron so hot that I can’t hold it any longer.

    My first chapbook, “The Glass and the Flame,” consisting of 40 poems, was submitted to a couple of presses last week and this week. One of them required $15.00 for submission, which was quite costly considering that even if my chapbook were not selected, I would still have to pay the sum, just so the editors would read. Still, I decided it was worth it because I wanted to be famous. I want to mark my name in the aisles of bookstores from LA to Rome, to Paris, and wherever literate people live. Not vanity. Justice. My voice deserves to be heard. I write ache, loneliness, sorrow, and desire — with no shame. For whom should I feel shameful about expressing a free spirit in the language of beauty and truth? After all, even scholars have sex. No, my writing is not of Anaïs Nin. Instead, my writing follows the tradition of Anne Ernaux, Duras, and Sappho with the mind of Szymborska. Furthermore, elsewhere across the fields of desire, Plath calls for intelligent lust, which comes in the form of Eros in a purple cloak. And of course, Psyche comes in together. In the secret garden of language.

    I have received rejections from journals that tout themselves as publishers of so-called “intellectual,” “confessional,” “existential,” or “societal” poems that demand social activism. Writers are routinely defined by their social, racial, and cultural backgrounds, as if these alone drive their voices. For example, if you are a Korean-American woman from an immigrant family, you are expected to address prejudice and alienation, tinged with jingoism. The prevailing belief is that my race and gender are the only traits editors value — as if being an “exotic” woman seeking an audience is enough. God, when will they realize that, beyond differences, we share more in common?

    Maybe this is just a writer’s rant. If so, so be it. Nevertheless, I write the most universal human feelings about love and desire, about solitude and sorrow that any woman across all cultures, ages, and classes can understand. Forget the MFA writers. After all, writers do not need master’s degrees to be considered intellectuals whose work takes precedence over writers who have lived rather than studied.

    If this essay moved you, you can support my writing at Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/steph79650

  • I Spoke Once, and Never Again

    Painting: Claude Monet, 1875. Public domain via National Gallery of Art.

    I keep it to myself, and myself—like a girl with no lips.
    And so, no one sees me. I’m forgotten, forsaken.
    Still, I am flesh and bone—the quiet soul, the raging spirit.

    Recognition is not my thing, or so I try to beguile.
    But the crying heart longs for it, like a flower needs water.
    The calm sea always hides the surge of roaring waves.

    I wanted to be someone’s one—even if he knows me not.
    I wanted to be a lover’s lover—even if he is someone’s one.

    When I shared what I felt, with streams of salt-sad fire,
    it was too much for them. They turned away.
    So I stopped confessing it altogether, evermore.

    I wish for nothing now—not tomorrow, not ever.
    With no expectations, I let the days pass—and fade away.

  • 🐾 Understanding Cats as Mirrors of My Soul

    They say pets reflect the personalities of those who care for them. The way they respond to others and express their feelings seems to mirror how they’re treated at home—or perhaps how their owners reveal the rawness of human emotion, unfiltered and instinctive.

    My two cats, Toro and Camille, mirror my ego and superego, respectively. Toro is a sensitive soul, easily shaken by the outside world and never shy about his emotions, almost like a little human. Camille, in contrast, is calm and observant. He watches me in silence, as though he sees through to the very center of me. At times, I think of Toro as the General Cat from Cat’s Eye, and Camille as Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service.

    Sometimes, I wonder if they are the little brother and sister who were never born—that they somehow returned in fur and paws to be near me… and, strangely, near my mother, who once chose not to bring them into the world.

    Whenever they curl beside me, their small hearts pulsing gently against mine, I feel the wonder of life swell within me—a quiet awe at its vividness, like a tide of feeling stirred with reverence for the mystery of creation, and the One who makes all things beautiful.

    Rudyard Kipling once said that a cat walks by himself. But perhaps he never met mine.

    Whatever happens, they are my familiars—silent witnesses and gentle companions, walking beside me through this strange and lovely journey of life.

  • The Poignant Loss: A Reflection on Absence

    I never stood beside him.

    Nor did my eyes ever meet his.

    But when I heard he was gone—

    forever, yesterday—

    a strange sadness fell upon me,

    like dusk after the sun has set.

    One soul less in the world,

    and silence filled the void.

    We will never see him again.

    His voice and face are lost to us,

    like an old photograph of the beloved

    set quietly aflame.

  • prompt 218 on I wish I could

    Daily writing prompt
    Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
    View all responses

    It was the best of my time, the highest of my time. I had a great job back then with a great package of benefits, working in a prestigious firm in New York City. It was my gliding age. 

    I wish I could go back to that time and stay there. Then, I would not have to come to California. I was too young to understand the real world and bear the responsibilities for myself and my family. Walking away from stress on a rash decision yielding to gushing emotions was not the wisest choice. Instead, I should have taken a vacation and traveled to lovely places to relieve work stress and see the world’s beauty. That way, I could separate the work from my life, lest I should bring the stress home and spend the whole time sulking. 

    Now that I have walked for half a century, these things appear from the past, like ghosts of the dead who resist leaving this world. 

  • On Watching “Adolescence” (2025) – Netflix Season 1

    This Netflix drama series does not focus on an activist narrative that many might passionately debate from various political or social perspectives. Instead, it explores how something unimaginably tragic can affect anyone or any family, regardless of their socioeconomic status, race, or cultural background. Committing a crime is not solely the domain of a degenerate or disturbed mind; rather, it can be seen as a sickness influenced by a combination of social factors and the inherent predispositions of individuals. And yes, this reality includes all of us.

    Here is an adolescent boy from a hardworking family whose father may have a temper but is kind and understanding and has a strong responsibility for his family. Hardly a likely candidate for the head of the dysfunctional family contributed to producing a psychopathic killer. Having a temper doesn’t mean you are automatically attuned to criminal minds. To that effect, the father of the boy is neither a saint nor a sinner, and his son’s problem is not of family but of peers; it’s from peer pressure under heavy intoxication with social media where your worth is valued by lookism and agism vying for popularity as key to success. A loser is an Incel whose insecurity is forced by the number of likes destined for a public whipping boy or walking sandbag. Yeah, it’s easy to label anyone who is not within a safe zone of being accepted, and you become a new outcast. If you are a woman outcast, then you are a new witch to be persecuted. 

    The problem with the boy here is his consequence and punishment, but that should not be relegated to the family. To ostracize the family of the sinner is a time-honored practice that never changes, just as there’s no new thing under the sun. While the drama shows the brutally realistic portrayal of the crime, the doer, and the family without overt display of emotions or elaborated scripts, it does not give the boy light of redemption in the person of the psychologist interviewing the boy. I cannot help but think that she’s there to get what she wants, which is to extort confession that he did kill the girl, and that is why he did it, not trying to help him cure the mind disease. She does not seem to be happy with herself either. 

    It was mind-disturbing and painful to see how the police handled the boy and the preponderance of shock that his family encountered on what might have been one of those ordinary mornings. Seeing his father criticizing himself for not being perfect broke my heart. Yet, no one is perfect; he is a good father with a strong sense of responsibility for his family and a good heart. That’s good enough. You see, bad things can happen to good people. Dad, please don’t blame yourself. You are a good father: good night and sweet dreams.