Inside Out & Back Again

by Thanhhà Lại

One cannot justify war unless each side flaunts its own blind conviction.

Wishes I keep to myself: Wish I could do what boys do and let the sun darken my skin, and scars grid my knees.

I love her more for her scars.

Everyone knows the ship could sink, unable to hold the piles of bodies that keep crawling on like raging ants from a disrupted nest. But no one is heartless enough to say stop because what if they had been stopped before their turn?

We must consider the shame of abandoning our own country and begging toward the unknown where we will all begin again at the lowest level on the social scale.

I don’t know them, so their pain seems unreal next to Brother Khôi’s, whose eyes are as wild as those of his broken chick.

People share when they know they have escaped hunger. Shouldn’t people share because there is hunger?

NO! What’s the point of new shirts and sandals if you lose the last tangible remnant of love?

Whoever invented English must have loved snakes.

Always an exception. Do not add an s to certain nouns. One deer, two deer. Why no s for two deer, but an s for two monkeys? Brother Quang says no one knows. So much for rules! Whoever invented English should be bitten by a snake.

I step back, hating pity, having learned from Mother that the pity giver feels better, never the pity receiver.

Would be simpler if English and life were logical.

Be agreeable. Not without knowing what I’m agreeing to. Mother sighs, walking away.

I’m the only straight black hair on olive skin.

Whoever invented English should have learned to spell.