June Ha
Last Night I Dreamt of a Long Wooden Dining Table
Last night I dreamt of a long wooden dining table;
a bench on one side, wicker chairs with tied-on gingham cushions on the other. I saw it six years ago, one late summer at my third (temporary) host family in Kelvin Heights.
We had sunlit breakfasts of crumpets, marmalade, and Earl Grey tea. We looked out to Lake Wakatipu and leaned against the Remarkables.
Bà nội, you do not like right-angled tables. How would you pass nấm kho đậu hũ from the far end of such a table into my porcelain bowl? Even chopsticks cannot bridge that distance.
Despite the countless noons we shared below the same low-ceiling kitchen, over the circular glass dining table, amongst the rusting metal stools in green and red – I still hold chopsticks in an ugly fist.
Last night I dreamt of a long wooden dining table.
I saw a pot stand at Te Papa gift shop: a string of fish, kauri for bodies, pāua for eyes. And so I daydreamed of it laid across that long wooden dining table – my own long wooden dining table – a skillet of charred asparagus on top.
I daydreamed of a tiled-floor kitchen with bay windows overlooking flowerbeds, of wooden drawers filled with loose-leaf tea, of a toaster with four slots
and enough people to use all four.
Asparagus - măng tây - Western shoots.
Why do I not dream of home?
Last night I dreamt of a long wooden dining table.
I don’t know how to get there and I don’t know who to ask.
My friends are spending money on rent during the weekdays and lattes on the weekend because we drink instant at work.
Musicians and poets don’t make it big; great ones don’t even make it out.
‘Chúng mày theo gen bố.’ - ‘You kids have your dad’s genes.’
That’s what bà nội always says when Fa plays the keyboard in the college band and studies journalism, when I join debate teams and publish in magazines.
Musicians and poets,
born from a woman who never claps to the right beat but knows the composers of every song from the Vietnamese ‘Red’ Revolutionary music era, a woman who writes down vegan recipes on the back of block calendar pages when you see them on TV
‘để Mi về rồi nấu’ - ‘for when Mi gets home’.
We have your genes, too.
Last night I dreamt of a long wooden dining table.
Last night a friend asked how many months it took before I started missing you when I moved
and I said I never missed you at all. That was half a lie. I am sorry.
The truth is,
I cannot afford to miss you, the same way I cannot
afford a long wooden dining table,
or passing on my genes,
or a fish-shaped pot stand,
or asparagus that is out of season.
The truth is,
I never let anyone hold my hand to teach me the right way to use chopsticks.
The truth is,
I would rather get it wrong from the beginning than have a taste
of what is right, only to dream about it for a lifetime.
‘In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ.’- Ocean Vuong
The truth is, I do remember, I just try to not miss.
Please let me dream of a long wooden dining table
because if I don’t, I would be daydreaming of a low-ceiling kitchen with no long wooden table, no kauri pot stand, no four-slot toaster (bà nội crisps up bánh mì in the airfryer), always an abundance of loose-leaf green tea, scorching hot inside the insulator made from the shell of a coconut.
And then I’d know that you told me you dreamt of me, too.
Xerox of a Xerox
Walking this city
feels like retracing the
carbon copy of your
ghost – jagged and
blue. I make a habit
of nicking myself on
corners to draw ink
and fill the gaps
left behind. My skin
is cyanotype: afraid of
touching you under
the sun, fearing the
permanence of such
acts. I scoop
twilights and dawn
breaks with pinkie-
sized vials stowed in
my tea drawer
bracing for when
you crash at midnight;
we could crack one
open and lather the
warmth over our joint
eyebrows. Kissing in
the dark is easy, so is
kissing in the city,
behind windows and
doors. Sometimes,
when we are at the
bay with sand on our
toes I catch glimpses
of how it would be if
you held me now, as
plainly as how you
hold the sea:
arms outstretched
eyes cloudward
everything rushes in at once.
June Ha has the tendency to retell the same story in five different ways three years apart. Her other work can be found in her phone’s notes app, dog-eared notebooks, and a smudged left palm.