13/09/2026 – Impresie. Albastru inefabil…

honey in the wound – jiyoung han

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Born Ilha—Manchu for “flower”—Tayiji entered the world with a crown of fragrant hair. Noses gravitated to his head’s pleasant scent, which grew famous in his village for clearing sinuses. Women made their husbands smell his head to silence their deafening snoring. The elderly sought good-luck whiffs to breathe in a new day. His sweetness was so inviting it drew sparrows and bees to circle him as they would a true flower. Tayiji learned early on he did not much like bees after one stung him and caused his fat baby hand to swell to twice its usual size. When none of the villagers’ usual remedies for insect stings worked, the sparrows rose to his cries. They plunged into a nearby mountain spring rumored to be the home of a great healing spirit and shook the water drops from their feathers onto his hand to rid it of poison. The sparrows then swatted the bees away until only songbirds remained to tend to their plump little flower.