hanoi by night

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before i leave a life / i burn my documents / set it all on fire / and start over. 

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see, you haven’t learned yet / it’s all about loss / and hope / risk / and danger / soon i’ll wake up / from a fever dream / and be far away / but tonight / we’ll drink rice wine / and laugh / flying on old motorcycles / that want to fall apart

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au co came from the mountains / lac long quan the sea / now they’re / intersecting highways

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sexy light / between kisses on the nhat tan

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m o t o r b i k e d r e a m l a n d 

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every november, we perform this ritual: building a festival in a national park out of bamboo, staples, and big ideas. for three days, we cover ourselves in glitter. we dance in the grass. we make art in the woods. we wash clean the grit of hanoi in dancefloor sweat and murky lake water. we set fires. we quest.

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smoking on a rooftop in tay ho, watching a new skyline go up through trinkets found at the junk shop. from fishing village to luxury condominiums. there goes the neighborhood. 

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the last night i saw her, before she rode away on the motorbike she built herself. 

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i don’t think you can really love / a place or a person or a thing / until you’ve left it. / like that old saying / love and loss are inseparable. / you can’t have one / without the other. / and how loss amplifies love / how pain creates beauty / how an end in sight / gives birth to meaning.  

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free beer friday got everybody smiling. a weekly ritual where we chug away the work week. the start to all our great benders. 

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20 women rented out an underground karaoke lounge on a tuesday night to scream spice girls songs at the top of our lungs. there was no occasion but us. it was a bachelorette party without a wedding. a celebration of our commitments to ourselves. a safe space for drunk ballerinas and laughter that hurts. and the only men present were pouring our beers and lighting our cigarettes. 

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they call it the friendship bridge. we park our bikes on the side of the beast and hold on tight as we jump the barrier, sitting on the edge of a nosebleed drop to the red river. the cement shakes beneath us to the rhythm of the semi-trucks. we crack a few beers into the wind and swoon for the city lights.

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some alleys are too good to ignore

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he grabbed my face on the dancefloor, both hands gripping scalp, and said, i never want to sleep. i never want to feel anything else. i never want this to end. but it always does. sometimes even before it begins. a lifetime of possibilities, always, always, flaking away. petals falling into nothing. it doesn’t really matter, though. we’ll be dead by morning, she said. or we’ll be picking glitter off our skin. 

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what’s happening to the world? we wonder. brexit, trump. and here we are on top of an old war bunker in Vietnam, drinking coconuts. 

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sometimes on the way home from Hero bar, we stop and look for our favorite banh mi lady, whisking pate and egg at 2AM. her cart a shining beacon in the night, her sandwiches so good, we want to marry her.

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alley 31, the way home