Your country’s memory is short. But know this:     We can still hear the planes, their death-knell hum—            We live, have been living, with this threat     circling our heads like we were carrion,                        staining the earth we still call home     despite the pictures, which know only how                      to mark what happened. The choices     to tell one truth at a time. Our names were                       made in the dry mouths of children,     napalm, ravaged paddies, lung cancer. Names,              sewn straight into our breasts. We live—     like ghosts, reverberate. The bad memories                              have to live somewhere. Why not     in the body? They climb to the surface,                               smother doubt to save the family     from war’s muck. War: the only surname                 we’re responsible for. The only sunlight     on our unmarked graves. Our sustenance                           is this story spun from the records,     amid your savage freeze. So we married fear,      and we’ve taken its name as our own. Yes, we     salvaged these small lives. We’re free, at least, to            sob and shudder, yes, and feed our babies,     remember the acrid clouds we dripped from,                                    and cling to them—as if we’re the bad ones—for dear, stupid life.