Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano

At some anonymous minute at five in the morning
I sit on a white stool on a black aluminum-gated balcony,
watching the orange glow of the street lamp in our alley.
My husband says that a South Asian family lives in the house
where lights come on just now and a shadow robotically prepares coffee.
I imagine Dad sitting here like I am, smoking a cigarette, already knowing
all the neighbours’ daily and nightly routines. He’d know their names,
how many kids they have, where they came from, if they were nice
or assholes, if they sold weed. And they’d know him—
the friendly chain-smoking American Vietnam veteran
whose daughter never comes out of the house because
she’s writing another book. They’d know
she was ill all the time, has three kids,
and her no-good ex-husband cheated on her when she got cancer.
They’d know that this American and his wife were from Pennsylvania
and this American hated Vancouver because he’s from
the country—American country—and it’s too rainy
and noisy and expensive here.

Turn my head to the left to figure out the distribution
of orange glows. One at every second house.

The crows are usually here, squawking out their morning roll call,
but they are keeping dry in the thick of some evergreen.

The rain woke me up. In the city that always rains,
we haven’t had much of it lately. Some are waking up
to the gentle knocking of an old friend, one who rarely goes on vacation
and is back. Even Dad wouldn’t have minded this rain.

The glitter of wet gravel,
the silky reflection of the orange glow on the roof of the doghouse,
wetness, light
dancing in the dark and otherwise.

Dad never visited this house.
We moved here when he died.
Coincidentally.
Or by design—something knowing we would need a new start.
Yet this is where his ashes lie—
in a house he never knew in the city that always cries.

It’s the wrong season to remember Dad.
It wasn’t sunny much when he was here.
But the rain woke me up
to sit on my balcony, and listen.

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Rickshaws. Rice paddies. An old war. Napalm.
“The Vietnamese people are so nice, so accommodating,”
I’m always told,
White people reassuring me that my Vietnamese half isn’t inherently demonic,
like the American soldiers were told. No—
“They are not people. They are things that you must kill by any means.
They are not human.”
And that was Dad’s first memory of Vietnam.
Me—I don’t have memories yet, but I’m sure glad those people are so nice.

Eagle Brand medicated green oil. Chay-yaw. Buddhas and their altar. My ghost family.
“You’re American like your daddy,” Mom tells me. “Your sister—she Vietnam.”
I can’t prove otherwise,
my tongue and throat conspire against me when I speak Vietnamese as I know how.
But I try to show Mom how much I like durian…
just like White people who’ve been to Vietnam on vacation or for research,
how they say they’re experts in durian and nuoc mam. They tell me this
after they try to make small talk on planes, asking
“Where are you from?”
And I say, “I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but now I live in Canada.”
And they say, “No, but where are you really from?”

Alcohol. PTSD. Heaven and earth and reincarnation.
Temples 90 minutes away. Church with an outhouse down the road,
by the crick.
I don’t know how it’s going to be when I go.
I’ve gone there in my mind so many goddamn times,
my migraines and insomnia from all that jetlag catching up,
but I know it’s not the same.
I just know there’s a demon I have to face.
I don’t know if it’s me.
I don’t know what it is.

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That porch swing, white paint chipping and flaking,
those two rusty chains and the hooks that hold them up,
the chains also hold up 90% certainty that we won’t crash
when we sit down, that we won’t splinter upon impact
on the oil-stained concrete…that swing swung us back and forth,
between the past in the back, almost hitting the cherry Chevy Nova parked
behind it, and the future at the front of our extended legs,
toes en pointe toward the hills basking in the orange ooze
of the sinking sleepy sun.

That porch swing was our time machine.
We got older and younger all at once with each launch.
Sometimes we became timeless,
or forever.
But we knew we’d always have to land at some point,
and get up,
and walk away.

Perfection of everything swung on that swing.
If I wanted to, if I could, I’d unhook the swing,
carry it across lands to find different rusty hooks to attach it to,
and it would be something “different,” as Pappy would say
in his sweet feathery husky twang,
to fly into the past and future in other spots,
but I would never be able to find that hill,
that sunset,
that cherry Chevy Nova and the oil stains the car tattooed
on the porch.
That swing, there, will always hold us up.
We’ll never fall down in time.

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His pipe collection. The walnut pipe holder for it.
Little curves to cradle the bowls, the stems held in place
in the two rows of three holes close to the handle. I know I’ll never smell anything
like that again—
the sweet earthiness of tobacco residue, the scorched wood, the plastic tips
where Dad’s lips would hug the stem in a tight embrace,
breathing in moments of calm, solace,
like when I put my face in my baby’s neck and inhale,
just like that.

Second-hand smoke didn’t exist in the 80s,
so I’d breathe along with Dad. He never told me to go away
when he needed to puff, and I’d watch mini plumes billow from the bowl
and out his mouth, a smoke snake trailing up and
disappearing into heaven.

Smoke lay in his beard. His bristly beard
that tickled my cheek. I can remember that tickle
but not the hug that brought me that close to him.

His pipe collection organised to be something that marked his days
from a particular time when tobacco came in a big tin can,
just like coffee. And I’d open the tobacco can just to smell,
like I would with the coffee. But Mom, she didn’t know

what those pipes were meant for
in this moment,
and now they are all lost, lost, lost,
and fallen. Probably broken, cracked, fractured,
buried in the earth somewhere with all the rest.

I wish I could hold a pipe in my palms,
holding the thing where his breath would pass in and out,
his breathing that he never thought anyone would care about,
but I do.

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