In our language, we say bị thương when we mean hurt.
In our language, we say thương when we mean love.
i love you
Impossible.
In our language, you and i don’t exist.
II.
Long ago,
strangers
traveled through
our lands,
marking their
path with Latin
script & carnage.
Not everyone
at home could
read, but we
understood
sacrifice.
My sisters
whispered làm
ơn into
the future
& watched it
spit back the
entrails of
a prayer.
III.
This was not the first time I had tasted blood. Maybe I would have drank until my lips stained wine if I wasn’t convinced he was just a man. Once, I chewed a body flat. Also once, a woman loaned touch and took me as collateral, which goes to show that suffering is hereditary.
IV.
Don’t be scared. You belong to me like sunlight seen on the other side of the world.
V.
The story stalls somewhere
between climax and conquest.
His fair skin.
My absolution.
I never asked to illuminate
such blue desire.
Desire
was the most I could be
not to be his at all.
For men always want
what they don’t have.
VI.
Chúa ơi, where have you gone?
I dreamt the sky but awoke
in a minefield swept clean.
Now the stars are dead.
Inside, bà nội kneels at the altar,
feeds paper to the flames:
spirit money for the poor of heart.
Dust settles and I believe again.