elegy: record of fingerprints

Rina Olsen
Content Warning: implied self harm
...for [Zainichi Koreans] over 14 years old, there was a fingerprinting system (changed to over 16 years old in 1982) in which the fingerprints of all 10 fingers of both hands were collected every 3 years…In September 1980, Jong-seok Han of Tokyo refused to be fingerprinted as prescribed in the Alien Registration Act, calling it a ‘brand of humiliation.’ It was initially called ‘the resistance of a single soul.’ However, support of this resistance soon arose among the younger generation, spreading even among Japanese people, and became one of the iconic social movements [in Japan] of the 1980s.

                                                — The History Museum of J-Koreans, “The Anti-Fingerprinting Campaign”

The late Mun-sun Kim (b.1925-d.unknown) wrote this petition with his own blood in October 1986, addressed to the President of the Republic of Korea, Doo-hwan Chun. It was written in blood to express the strength of his convictions.

                             — The History Museum of J-Koreans, “Mun-sun Kim’s Petition Written in Blood”
how we are / defined by what we get / to touch while we are still / alive. you circled / a drain, planets in orbit drawn / into the blazing eye of Amaterasu. you followed / the pattern of your fingerprints, clinging / to your own hands so as not to be flushed / away. what to do, what to do when / the labyrinth and Ariadne’s thread are spun from the same / loom and the Minotaur’s hooves are stamped into your back? picture this: / my mother and her mother, marching back / [home] / with their fingertips dissolved / to cinders. your fingerprint: ripples in a lake. a skipped / stone’s plea to stay immortal. how everything moves away / from the strike because they have to / forget the splash. i swam up and broke / the surface and this is what Bluebeard’s wife must have felt when she couldn’t / clean the key. i just couldn’t keep myself / from spilling out of my own body, you / said, and swung yourself / into the forgiveness of a clock’s minute hand. your / voice, redirected from the silent throat / to the veins. in Japanese, / the word for “finger” is yubi. you be / the body. you be the knife. you be the one / to grind your grandfather’s ghost into the ground / just to make ink from his bones. you be the one / to ask if you can still hear the people sing when there / is no bass clef, only a / treble clef coiling towards its / own print. all i ever / wanted was my mother’s fingerprints back. i wanted my mother’s hands / to hold my face like it won’t ever have to crack open / instead of the stamp. i wanted to touch / the moment of Han Jong-Seok’s autotomy, Kim Mun-Sun’s autotomy, the gecko’s autotomy, the moment / when i could / hold my mother’s hand and cross / the street without feeling how my fingerprint fit / in hers like kokeshi nesting dolls. because / i wanted to stay innocent without having to touch anything. because i wanted to be / without having to bleed.
Rina Olsen, a rising high school senior from Guam, is a fourth-generation zainichi Korean-American and the author of Third Moon Passing (Atmosphere Press, June 2023). A 2024 alum of the YoungArts program, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, and the John Locke Institute Summer School, she has been recognized by the John Locke Institute, Sejong Cultural Society, Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, Carl Sandburg Home, and Guam History Day. Her fiction pieces “Bataya Slums, 1971” (Milk Candy Review) and “Skeletons in the Closet” (Okay Donkey) were long listed for Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2024. Find out more at her website: https://rinaolsen.com.