con út nhẹ quá, có vẻ như gió sẽ làm nó bay.
i dreamt of you saying this to me again. you first said it when i was in preschool, on a day you watched me struggle to walk to the car in the middle of a storm. you always smiled whenever you had an opportunity to joke that the wind will one day carry me away.
and you kept saying it even as i got older. i grew into my body and the physical implications of the phrase were abandoned for new shifts of meaning. so light that she'll fly away. but also – so airy that she's lost wandering her own mind for truths, so gentle that she easily hurts in the world.
you've often said you pitied me, like you believed i was cursed with thought. i've always assumed it was just because you knew life is relentlessly harsh to girls. but now i know it was my talent for thinking myself into sadness time and time again. too light. too airy. too gentle.
i mentioned this dream to erik and he asked – "do you think that it means 'light' as in 'weightless' or 'light' as a metaphor for truth?"
and that got me thinking: what would it mean if she said it again today? would it would be neither? or maybe everything all at once? or something i couldn’t anticipate over the barrier of language?
would she refrain from saying anything at all?
i'm not so sure.
so much meaning gets lost in translation.
con cảm thấy gió thốc vào mặt
but i think if she could see me now,
và con thấy ở phía chân trời dịu đi rất nhiều
she would know that her út is not so lost anymore, not so easily hurt anymore,
con mơ hồ nghĩ –
but somehow still so very light
đi nhẹ nhàng nha con?
