The core of who I am is difficult to retain,

just like the shadows that distance themselves from the living. I have been having a very difficult time remembering who I am.

"I do not want to forget" I told myself. I told myself this again and again and again. I told myself this as I was saying goodbye. I told myself this as I was getting on the plane. I told myself this as I was traversing across oceans. I told myself this as I was staring out the split sight of blinds. I told myself this as I looked at unnatural palm trees. I told myself this as I became familiar with the freeways, the cars, and the grind. I told myself this as the laughter of relatives became constant. I told myself this as my shoulder gave in to the typing the hunching the waiting the dreading the dragging the sadness. I told myself this because I was naive. I was naive to think that if I said it enough times it would become true and stay true.

/ nothing gold will stay.

Retreating in my fears, I found myself not writing, not really knowing what to feel, hoping that this would pass.  It was one thing to find myself in Vietnam, but it is another to lose yourself in America. "I do not want to forget." I held onto it. I held onto the shifting grasps of lives in the Mekong Delta, the kind of lives that will test your ability to absorb sadness, dreams and frustration all at once. It's the kind that will remain with me always, stirring underneath my new thoughts and worries in this cemented dream of mine.