1997

there are no right generations to be born in.

1997

There are many things that have kept me alive. Antibiotics
and Vitamin D supplements. Hand soap and filtered water.
And a good poem, maybe. I belong to this day and this age.
The way it gives and takes and takes. This wounded age.
This hopeful age. This age of sun-scorned earth. Of new
impossible hungers. Of TV debates, veins popping on foreheads
in technicolour. I was born long after this country was born.
Right before it launched off the cliff of the brave new millennia.
Between riots. After truth. Beyond Anthropocene. I was
born into a rupture. Into a threshold. Into dial up internet.
Into suburban malls that appear like glowing mushrooms
after the rain. Into the feeling that I was crossing over
from the end of times. To someplace else. Somewhere
beyond. I have never been nostalgic for another time.
I have never known another world. I belong here,
only here. The noise in my head is all 21st century,
totally hypermodern. A part of me is always awake.
Who am I if not this noise, these blaring lights?
One day the lights went on in the city
and they never went off.

Photo by Thanh Luu