Back in university, there was a time when I composed quite a few poems. Actually, it was more like poems coming to me than me writing them because the words came and fit one another so naturally that it felt like they already existed and my role was just to make their existence tangible with my handwriting. But then one day, they stopped coming to me. A complete stop. I thought I would not write another poem anymore. So lately, I was surprised when this poem came, so suddenly yet so naturally just like how previous ones did.

It was in the first hours of my last day in Saigon before I come back someday I don’t know when. Not long after I woke up, when I was sitting at my table working on an unfinished report, I picked up my pen and a piece of paper. And the words started to materialize themselves, in the light of a breaking dawn.

I didn’t name it until I decided to post it here onto this blog. Thought the most befitting title for it is simply ‘The unsent letter.’

 

Saigon

June 4th, 2018

If I had met you earlier, where would I be

Where you are or where my dream is?

Is it my lack of courage or your lack of interest

That sends me there across the sea?

*

Let me keep your smile in my heart though

And let it warm, until it still can,

Cold moments of my solitary journey

And until with other memories it blends.

*

“If we’re meant to be, we’ll be together someday,”

In tearful moments, so I hear myself say.

But maybe it’s just a fantasy

That is built for and by only me.

For you,

Hai