At the Citadel in deep ponds the koi, like shards of afternoon light, swam at the surface waiting for crumbs. I stood with my eldest son in the rain. Tiny frogs hid in cracks between the pavers while we traced a spray of bullet holes on a wall, the mortar crumbling damply beneath our fingers. The rain, in sheets, closed out the distance and we shivered in the small space where we stood, between the darkened sky and the wet stone.
My notebook from that trip is a child's exercise book. It is dog eared from dampness, the writing smudged, pages missing. I wrote in hotel rooms and airports. At Khe Sanh I wrote as I watched ladies in conical hats sweep the ground slowly with metal detectors and the sun was high between the hills around us. On the train south from Danang I wrote perched on a bench greasy with years of use, the smell of old smoke and the carriages rocking like a boat at anchor.
One lunchtime at a cafe outside of town we perched on kindergarten sized chairs, and the children, delighted, fed the resident cats with their fingers and drank coke straight from the bottle. I still have a bottle opener from that trip. It was made by a man who couldn't speak from a thin piece of wood and two screws. On it he wrote, "Hue 2011." When you use it, the beer bottle tops fly off like insects.
My notebook from that trip is a child's exercise book. It is dog eared from dampness, the writing smudged, pages missing. I wrote in hotel rooms and airports. At Khe Sanh I wrote as I watched ladies in conical hats sweep the ground slowly with metal detectors and the sun was high between the hills around us. On the train south from Danang I wrote perched on a bench greasy with years of use, the smell of old smoke and the carriages rocking like a boat at anchor.
One lunchtime at a cafe outside of town we perched on kindergarten sized chairs, and the children, delighted, fed the resident cats with their fingers and drank coke straight from the bottle. I still have a bottle opener from that trip. It was made by a man who couldn't speak from a thin piece of wood and two screws. On it he wrote, "Hue 2011." When you use it, the beer bottle tops fly off like insects.
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