Reflection by Roxanne

Physically, Vietnam lingers: the toenail polish, chipping coral, still intact; the fading scar of a bug bite on the inside of my thigh. This body, carried across the sea and back in the humming belly of a plane which I remember smelled like high-altitude air conditioning, and handsoap and dry eyes, and staticky hair. I remember the stewardesses, with their round moon pale faces.

I remember lots of other things too.

The humidity, a heavy heartattack. A drowsy warmth ceaselessly bearing down, to sleep, to sweat. You can take big fish gasps, shallow inhales, and still feel dizzy with heat, and gasoline fumes, and cigarette smoke. The roads shimmer with a million glistening silverfish mopeds, crumbling asphalt. The rush of movement, the constant agitated speed, it makes you feel like you're going somewhere; it's very much a part of the language, in the way their mouths move, and the words slide up and down the length of their tongue and lips. A stream of endless movement. So many people, so many mouths with their singsong noises moving past the teeth.

I remember the taste of sweet lime soda - I sucked it down hungrily, greedy and desperate. I remember dozing past miles of perfectly aligned trees, the skeletal bumps of an oxen's back and their black doe-like eyes, watching me falter in-and-out-of a halfsleep dreams. I dreamed of solemn too-young orphan boys who did not smile at me, and of his small eager hands, and the waxiness of crayons. I remember the telephone wires of the city, tangled blackbird's nests sagging under its weight, cutting the sky into millions of pale slivers. I remember the South China Sea, the fishboat city of moving lights, the texture of hotel beds, places where the air is warm and moist and the ocean is like bathwater, and laughing faces peer through a haze of smoky incense.

I remember so many things: of curling against a window and shyly watching a man on a moped - I can still see the blue lights flickering away on his dashboard, dials spinning, the reflection in his square, black glasses, the thin gleam of sweat across his Asian cheekbones - and of knowing even then I would miss terribly.

(I'm going to go eat some coconut candy now, and wallow around in nostalgia.)