The rubber soles of my shoes
gripped the cracked pavement.

We slowly descended through the mazed ravine
of houses nestled in Seodaemun.

The sun in the sheltered sky
couldn’t find us as we scurried
from brick to brick, from step to step.

Occasionally, we saw through a frosted window
caricatures marionetted in seemingly staged ways.

A vegetable truck blaring competed for the slick gravel
with hunched elderly women, prodding restlessly, squabbling
endlessly, smiling furtively.

We emptied onto our street within sight of our apartment,
the day empty of distress, the night bringing its own anxiety
coping , endlessly coping,

breathing,
living every inch
of mischief,
bending to the
surrender of sleep.

Tired from the sun that never
could catch us, not for an instant.

By Michael Gallagher

My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.

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