🧨 ‘75 Bombs

July 1775:
we cue the songs,
liberty and pride…

But these days
it sounds too much
to me, too loud,
like fireworks
I once wished
my parents spoke of.

Not about our Tết,
nor loud red firecrackers
in country homes—
but once-wild dreams,
child-like times before ’75:
a life unburnt, alive
and burning still.
A time unlabeled:
A Refugee;

Việt Kiều.

I wonder—
do firey songs
now sung beneath
drone-lit Gazan skies
sound any different
from the songs my đồng bào
heard as children.

—by tbt
#FourthOfJuly