Namese Bahn Bao

Seeing your face across the two-top table

My feelings bubbled in the tea

The involvement to the air of wanting

You like a redolent wallflower

Eye lines to the entry door

Maître d set me alone to the only open pair of seats

In the center aisle

Your arrival embraced in the passage of time

That a place in the corner opened

As others finished

So that you request like the shadowed stairwell

I instigate to facilitate your comfort

To a placement where no one can approach you from the rear

Terms and time beating of knowing you wanted the booth

Over the chair

Softness in the lean

Bucolic conversation of the Vietnamese Catholic fishermen of Versailles

My parents lost in country Mississippi farming, hunting, and the trails

Your friends in the desert plotting solar independence

Father with the horse on his badge, not sure because you never got a chance to ask

First cavalry division of the United States Army based in Ford Hood, Texas

Vietnam tours TRICAP armored, air-mobility, and air cavalry counteroffensives

Insignia gold covered Norman shield with a black horse’s head

You hint you learned to run like him

I pause in the space the aperture of those words create

For another day to see the blossom take her time to unfurl

As she is ready

I think of Terrebonne, New Mexico, to New Orleans

I see the glitter on your cheek and see the beautiful dance

Of the way a woman is like an oven taking time to warm

Authentic