Letters We Never Received from Mekong

Does the water rumble where you wake
Or does it stream silently like the tears down faces
Trembling by the river, waiting for the gods to sweep us up,
we wept
On my knees I cried,
the day you were born I promised there shall be no more pain
For what I’ve endured is far too much for the deservance of one being
You are the river that rumbles, the silent current that keeps wake
For living inside you are the souls of many,
who did not make it to the other side
You live in their absence, and so you must keep going
The river endures, holding the sorrows I do not wish to promise you
But I know that life is filled with tides of agony, in pain you will find strength
You will prevail

you must

It is your destiny

To Whom This Letter Shall Be Received,

The year is two-thousand-nineteen. Forty-four years have passed since I’ve long heard from you, but my thoughts linger on your face every day. I’ve come to visit, the same ways you’ve come to visit me. In ways we both don’t understand, we see with eyes that know one another. Strangely so, it’s in the Life I cannot touch you that I feel the closest; being a child of many children.

Word had spread that we were looking for one another, and in the middle of that Time, we became the same. So I am writing this letter to whom it shall be received, at the delta. I have no courier to give my news, but I am hoping when I sing out loud the right ears will be received by a parcel of five incense. And you will know, we have been thinking of you.

The year is two-thousand-nineteen. The noise of Hmong children can be heard everywhere. They laugh and sing, and they also cry. Our children know Feeling but they also know you. You gave them the manuscript to create torches. A reflection brighter than one-thousand moons, to flicker a glimpse of luminance on the infinite years of the far future — where the speed of light has not yet met. They continue to send letters to Mekong — the children are thinking of you — and they remember.