slivers of the sky (1)

by cthurst6

Ho Chi Minh. Saigon. the image of US troops grabbing hold of helicopters, grabbing hold of babies held out by their mothers as smoke and fire followed after them. the North was coming, they yelled, the North was coming. gunshots, gunshots, explosions, the helicopters in the sky, the jungle burning below. people clambered on the transports trying to flee. they were pushed off, reaching hands, desperate hands, the gunshots, the gunshots. colonial power gone, neocolonial power gone, the vacuum was filling in violently. it was the end of ten years, the end of an era, a people, a city, a war.

Ho Chi Minh was big. bigger than Hanoi. and modern. some still called it Saigon, the center of the city, the power of Vietnam–a remnant in language of past times. we found our hotel down a narrow alleyway not more than eight feet wide in which windows were above us, roofing, clothing, wires above us. the sky could hardly be seen down these labyrinthine, concrete canyons. people grouped, cooped up, crowded in their little apartments, unseen and forgotten behind the façade of tourist restaurants and bars.
the tourist hub was nearby–literally the next street over–and we went to investigate. sitting drinking iced coffees in a café, we spotted Josh approaching and asked him to join us as rain began to fall. it fell hard for a short time, pooling up in the gutters, the potholes in the ground. people took cover, drove through running through to get home.
it smelled of everything dirty and clean. oil, cardboard, grease and noodles and smoke and asphalt–wet asphalt–shit and cloth, wood and car. a vibrant, excessive, overabundance of all.
they went out at night, i stayed in to write. the amount of life was overwhelming. there was no night, it was too bright to be night; it was too light in the dark, it made the eyes hurt, the smells made the eyes hurt. it hummed and thrummed outside the walls, weighed down by the gravity of itself.

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”

~ Charles Baudelaire