Grandma twitched in her sleep,
where my cousin,
and my best mate,
laid next to me as we giggled and played with the shadows on the wall.
In our hands the ability to transform,
a limb into a head,
a silence into a story.
At fifteen, all I had was girlhood,
a friend where I learn “solidarity” from,
where we would poop our pants when the other pooped her pants,
so the other wouldn’t experience the humiliation alone.

At fifteen, grandma spoke three languages,
one is Vietnamese for it’s who she is now,
one is French for she needed it to open a merchant shop,
one for her mother-tongue that may never be passed down again.
In a few years time, her family would leave her to flee the country,
where she had made the decision to stay,
because of the man whose first love was war,
because what was her life if not war mistaken for love?
because what is solidarity
to a country that thinks of her as a foe,
to a country that would force her to hide under a bomb shelter.

At fifteen, grandpa ran away from home to join the light of the revolution,

the same one that many of his comrades may never see the end of.
He swam across the Returning Sword lake,
and tied the flag on top of the pole
on top of someone else’s grave.
(Why is there a grave in the middle of the lake, grandpa? /
Because someone with money wanted to honor his parents there /
So now when you see the symbol of your city,
you will see a floating grave)
The flag bleeds red.
As a boy grandpa was taken to be beaten,
for printing and spreading news.
(Were you afraid? /
I’m more afraid that one day your youth would forget
what I did all of this for)

Dad was born under the rain of bombs
loud enough to silence his cries.
At fifteen, boyhood was to given a knife and a lesson
on how to protect his family should the enemies come.
Boyhood was to become the pillar of the house,
to store banned books under the shelter and read them under
the dying light of oil lamps.
(and be whipped for wasting oil)
And maybe because he was war born and war raised,
it was all he ever knew.

He chased after everything foreign because freedom is,
too, a foreign concept.
He yearned to travel the world because the sky was caged in,
with American helicopters.
and the water was poisoned with an orange chemical.

Hanoi
means the river inside.
The Red River slithers through the city and breaks it in half,
crumbs and soils,
and blood,
painted the water pink.

You tell me how you looked up and see the map of the sky shaped by buildings,
at the square grids of Old Quarters
like veins.
Is it the river or the people
that makes the city bleed.

V. D. Nghiem (she/her) is a Vietnamese fantasy writer with a multicultural background, having grown up in Vietnam, New Zealand, and Germany. She completed a Bachelor degree in Data Science and a Master in Financial Law. In 2023, she published a short story titled “The Dance of Time and Power” for story.one’s Young Storyteller Award.