By Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm
My Vernacular
The age before you made legos of words.
My father wanted a boy.
With no package, he left me in my mother’s arms.
Your pubescent years singing sugary poetry
Chasing skirts, fighting our enemies
At sea on a boat, me
You deep in poetry seasoned with life.
My head in the clouds
Feet deep in trigonometry
While you were playing God (not Morgan Freeman)
I roamed the campus, a spectre of my youth.
I wanted to be you
Knocked on the doors of the creator
“So are the days of our lives.”
We made families, didn’t we?
And so on and so on so forth.
Blah blah blah
What’s the point of chopping down trees, the forest on fire
To further an ego in printed books.
No one could ever douse our blinding light. (wink)
19 December 2019
(tặng LVT)
