In the 2023 film Past Lives, writer and director Celine Song explores the concept of inyeon through the main character Nora, a Korean American woman who navigates her relationships with two loves, her husband and her childhood best friend. “There is a word in Korean—inyeon. It means providence or fate. But it’s specifically about relationships between people,” says Nora to her husband when first meeting him. “It’s an inyeon if two strangers even walk by each other on the street and their clothes accidentally brush. Because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married, they say it’s because there have been 8,000 layers of inyeon over 8,000 lifetimes.” Write a poem that contemplates a connection of this type, a fated or destined encounter with another person, whether brief or long-lasting. What might you have meant to each other in a past life?
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