Phương ơi, don’t be afraid.
To be rootless is to have many homes.

So say the romantics. To be rootless
is to always miss a home. To always think

of the ones who have loved you
& now no longer do. To feel their presence

on days that shiver, you salvage their love
with tattoos, the blood oozing out

like warmth but even the lines
grow fuzzy with time. You try to love

the wandering, the way a stranger, here or there,
falls in step with you. You call this

stranger’s love & follow a man home because
dark dusk felt lonely, then bolt out because

you’re alone in a foreign land, but what is
foreign anyway? Home is everywhere

but never where you are. So you do it
again, months later. This time, the man gifts you

a shirt so midnight blue you stay
past sunset. The horizon, orchid, the same

childhood you are sick of. You wonder
where to go next, but the loneliness,

it always catches up. Now, you promise to stay.
To have a streetlamp feel so familiar you mistake it

for the moon. Phương ơi, to be rootless is to grow
trees out of boredom & overwater them. Each plant

that comes to you dies before you learn
how to care. Like today, you break.