Motorbike Ride (July 14, 2019)

Motorbike Ride

Hà Nội is full.

It's full of the hum of its heartbeat thrumming

through veins that move an endless, strobing stream of souls

by ones and by tens and by millions per minute.

Hà Nội is full of the whispers and shouts of those countless souls' stories

weaving in and out and around each other,

carried on the buzz of a million wheeled grasshoppers,

careening, leaning, reading each other in anonymous agreement.

Hà Nội is where, zoomed in, I can be found,

an anomaly ferried along on the tide,

looking out through a pair of gray eyes as I weave and lean.

But I cannot read, and so I ride.

And while I ride, I am full of Hà Nội–

full of the smell of its colors,

full in a way that I crave because Hà Nội is a feast

for senses I don't know the name of.

Each doorway under each block letter sign

in the language I strain to decipher

reveals a freeze-frame of scents, scenes, and sounds

that I lock onto and release in rapid succession.

Air con and music, hose water and light

leak out to the street with the smells

of coffee or wood smoke or noodles or tea–

something fried, something fresh, something strong.

Neat rows of produce are arranged in their kinds

by a grandma perched there on her stool.

She will move on when she's done with her day,

but to me as I pass, she is frozen in time.

Meat cleaved in pieces, ready to buy,

is displayed under lazily rotating fans

that someone's rigged up with rags for the blades,

wobbling and whirling away flies.

Dress shops, men's shops, makeup, massage,

hair salons, nail salons, toys,

and holes in the wall that I wonder who sees

are tucked in beside five-story, neon-bright malls.

Shiny aluminum shelves stacked up high–

I wonder who buys all of these.

And then, tied to the side of somebody's bike,

one swipes by just an inch from my knee.

Shopkeepers' children, so close to the street

that I marvel at how they survive,

wrestle, run barefoot and shirtless, or tease,

or crowd around YouTube on their parents' iPhones.

A girl whose job is sweeping up trash

pushes her cart against the flow

of polished professionals poised on their Honda Waves.

Their eyes skim her surface, unseeing.

A young guy, so proud of the pretty young thing

leaning dreamily against his strong back, revs his engine.

She squeals, and he laughs,

and then they're just another taillight in the distance.

Two men in front of a shop selling fans

air themselves out on the stoop,

singing karaoke to only themselves

and the split-second audience who is me.

Huddles of men hunched on blue plastic chairs

laugh and loosen amid smoke and stories,

and hold up their fingers to summon bia hơi–

I've sat there before, but tonight, I ride by.

I ride by, just one soul amid millions who flow

on these motorbikes–

the blood in Hà Nội's veins–

because, amazingly, I have somewhere to be.

But while I ride, Hà Nội is full, and I am full of Hà Nội.

Zoomed in, zooming, I can be found:

an anomaly ferried along on the tide,

looking out through a pair of gray eyes.

–erinrmsocha 7-14-2019