Sorrow
Non-descript Vietnamese restaurant, empty except for John and me.Twentysomething waiter, raven hair dyed blond on top, gold hoops in each ear. Four crudely formed letters march down the inside of his forearm, a row of numbers beneath.
"Tell me about your tattoos," I say.
"What do you mean? They're just letters."
"They mean something to you?" I take a sip of caphe sua da.
He looks at me for a long moment, not dropping his eyes. Gently, he offers his arm for my inspection.
"Translated?" he says. I nod. His forefinger moves from letter to letter. "It mean: sorrow for my life forever."
He points to the numbers, a date in a not-to-distant April. "For the day my baby die."
Our eyes meet. I don't say anything, bite back a prayer: May you be at peace, may you be free of suffering, may you be well and happy.
Unspoken words sent into unblinking eyes.
He smiles faintly, shrugs his shoulders, moves back behind the cash register near an altar to the Buddha.
The TV comes on, speakers wired to fill the two rooms with sound, a music video: rich, orchestrated synthesizer, Vietnamese rock derived from Blue Oyster Cult.
A baby wailing in the background.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Sunday, July 25, 2004
Comments:
DB, stopped by the blog today for a break from the dissertation. This is a beautiful piece ....chilling, but beautiful. Thanks for sharing it... LDF
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