A place only we could reach
Hey Little, Hello Big,
You might find this silly, but while I was writing this, a song called Somewhere Only We Know danced in my mind.
family dinner
Now, the climb up the hill to the campus of brick soaked the sweat onto her back, air so sweet she sucks her teeth, both at the lingering taste and at a loss of direction. Her feet sink into the grass as she wades over picnic blankets and frisbees, the burning sun searing the scrap of paper she clung to with dewy fingertips. As her gentle grip slips, the words, scribbled with pencil, bleeds deeper into the page, the image a blood memory.
contrapuntal for a november birthday 33.64414063919488, -117.57414150416206
the snow is always excited to see you,
clinging to your legs in a mad rush like a child.
what sounds!
jewels twinkling over the roofs of the city- windchime wilderness.
the body is what coalesces in constancy,
so you become the relic
red brick.
you are a monument
On Longing and Staying: Reflections on Three Generations of Vietnamese, 50 Years After The War
There on the Pacific horizon burns a simmering glow.
For my grandmothers and grandfathers,
Squid ink, the Trường Tiền Bridge, American troops
Are all they know.
Southern Roots
At some point, I became a young woman. Somewhere between ballet lessons and spelling bees, I began to spend my time reading the Wall Street Journal. I no longer trailed shyly behind my grandmother to the nail salon, but began booking my own appointments. It was some time after I mastered how not to rip my stockings, but before I experienced heartbreak for the first time, that I went to bed and woke up as a young woman. Ashy orange foundation no longer found itself buried in my pores, and my head was no longer the biggest thing on my body.