i miss Vietnam like i miss music, miss singing to myself along the streets of Hanoi, all across the West Lake one morning, i miss the Black Eyed Peas, and hearing them again and again and again at every bar i drank at in Saigon, and i miss the drums of footsteps, cleavers carving chicken, and fingers borrowing into sticky rice. the rhythms of cigarettes and beer blessings, falling onto the pavement like shooting stars, in between sugar cane drink stands and motorcycle exhaust. i miss how movement there was so full of music. how street corners made me want to bust out a fat cigar and just smoke myself to sleep. how my backbone just felt so at ease there.

fuck, it was a mistake for me to leave so early.

but things happen, I guess, and this trip has left so many holes in me. reuniting with Hong Kong, a city that’s the hustling memory of my childhood, and seeing it in full flesh, “all grown up now.” and Vietnam is a constant stir, a soup that just gets hotter, that tastes different as more things are thrown into it, stories about my grandparents, poetry with my cousins... I got full just of listening to people talk. and my grandmother suddenly passing away, and how all of a sudden my family from all over the world is together around a dinner table in Causeway Bay, tea being poured, a slight uncomfortable silence.