Years of hunger set my relatives adrift.
My aunt moved to Thanh Hoa province where she married a Thanh Hoa man.
For years, she has been the daughter-in-law in a distant land.
I never met her husband,
and longed to see him during Tet and on the death day anniversaries
when relatives gathered from everywhere.
But my aunt carries the misfortune
of one, who in her youth, had a widow's band tied around her head.
Why did she not take another step and marry again?
Why did she not find her way back to our home village?
My mother said she had to care for her flock of young children,
that being so far away and so poor, she couldn't return.
But one day, thirty years later,
my aunt returned with her flock of children to pay their respects.
Her children had grown up,
but her parents' home was empty of all but the smoke of incense
which grew thick as my aunt's sorrow.
My aunt led her children around our village
and they knelt together before the graves of her parents.
Incense sticks burned above the tangle of grass.
My aunt became a shadow, silent and fading.
I look at her back, bent over from her hardships.
Most of her life has withered, longing for home.
Her hair has whitened, yet she is still adrift.
Oh my homeland, the leaf again falls to the tree's roots.