Dear Vietnam…

Ocean Vuong

My dear Vietnam,

when I left you I could not speak.

A child could only watch as waves

melted from your burning shores

my face, an apparition.

On that day in that hut

you quietly soaked

my mother’s blood.

In your palms I breathed the world.

You must remember.

Vietnam, I can only tell you

through the courage allowed

by ink, paper, the infinite depths of whiteness.

My heart spills at the spout.

I write beneath banners whose stars

have lost their stitches, falling in pearls

of fire on the roofs along your spine.

If tears could wash

the blood within your roots

I would weep each night

I curl into cotton

and forget.

How thin you sleep, your fruit

poisoned with Orange, your rivers

blistered with the skulls

who lost their dreams.

I did not think of you, as I sucked

on lollipops and drooled

at Happy Meals. But did you know

I always saw your eyes inside

these filthy mirrors?

Forgive me; I have only traced

the path given. These eyes have learned

to melt when brushed

with the simplicity of pleasure.

As I filter through folds of memory,

hording your valleys, your forests, your people

into this skull’s dusty chamber,

there is too much left to be said

and no language to pronounce

our answers.

You and I, two shadows reaching

for the soles of feet. I bury these hands

into dirt, feeling for your whispers.

Cradled in my palms: a morsel of earth

that could be you. Here is a planet

intact through sinews of withered roots

and I

am the one to crumble.