Sergeant Loc invites me to Sunday dinner on the Mekong River
with his parents and siblings. They live in wooden shacks

among a cluster of homes raised above the water on poles.
A three-foot wide pathway of slatted boards interlaces

this mini-village. For the first time in Saigon, I am afraid.
I have been prepared to get shot or blown up, but drowning

was never on my radar. It seems somehow inappropriate.
I picture myself falling off and complaining all the way down.

I see children, and I wonder how many others have already
fallen to their deaths playing some childhood game.

When we arrive at his residence, the father shows me
a chicken coop made of wire mesh. I watch the birds shit

right into the river. I make the decision to wait until I leave
rather than do the same. The father kills a chicken for me.

I feel guilty, both for the animal and for the family's loss. We eat
well, shovelling rice and meat into our mouths with chopsticks.

I am sated in the middle of such lack. For that one day, we are
filled with familial love, and I become their son and brother.

The next day in a tent city surrounded by a minefield, I will
again teach their son about killing things other than chickens.