In my mother's kitchen,
the speakers are filled with the swish of rice paddy fields
and the sweet June tune of survival.
The first Cambodian song I ever heard
was my mother's battle cry.
I was seventeen,
sitting at her bedside,
nestled in between breath,
and the art of choking back tears.
This is where I first learned how to stop being a body
an empty closet waiting to be filled with apologies.
My mother's second husband was just that.
I only remember arms strong enough to become branch
and the laughter of cicada.
Loud.
Everlasting.
What you think of when you hear summer's wind.
The twirl of hair around my mother's smile
and the subtle scent of peonies on the granite counter top.
On his drive to work,
he played his favorite song.
louy, louy, louy, louy
louy tinh snaeha
The woman sings about not being able to afford love
like it is the ax that keeps the men away from our forests.
What you don't understand about the generation before me
is that these souls watched their own sweethearts
be stripped of honey.
Watched their jaws unhinge and
their stomachs fill with vinegar.
When their skulls pop open,
the villages ferment in blood and unsung hero.
I've never seen my mother and her friends drink red wine.
They don't celebrate the holidays with fireworks.
They like to swim.
Their bodies have become memoir of Mekong River,
lily pads,
and lotus flower.
On the Fourth of July,
I share the bed with my mother.
She asks me why I make so much noise when I move my body;
why my skull has become the soundtrack to the cock of a gun.
I don't reply.
She's still running away from the war.
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