citrus skins is inspired by the Korean folktale, “fairy and the woodcutter” (선녀와 나무꾼). This collection is our take on the tale as a story of how it feels to be complete and incomplete as love (for place, for people, or for ourselves) stretches us out over many geographies.
Home is many places, and home is many things.
But most of all, I think, it lives between our ribs, always breathing.
You can read the full version of "citrus skins" below.
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Once upon a time,
high up in the mountains
where the wind quietly dances,
there was a pond where heavenly
fairies would come to bathe.
But one day, a fairy's wings were ripped upon a rock, and they could not return home.
A woodcutter passing by the forest approached the crying fairy, and offered to help repair their wings.
And so the fairy came to live on earth.
It wasn't easy adjusting to life on earth.
But the longer they spent together, the more the fairy and the woodcutter found they had to learn from one another.
They mended the wings together, weaving together pine splinters, tiny fish bones, persimmon seeds, salt from the fairy's tears, dirt from the woodcutter's ax, sounds of laughter over dinner, and the colors of all the mountain's seasons.
And like a citrus peel wound between two hands they found themselves stretched out between heaven and earth.
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Special thanks to Jhenna El-Sawaf and Ollie Eun-ji Kim Dupuy. <3
Jewelry and accessories provided by Chaotic Reason. <3