Zip Line Tour

Costa Rica

We shed our rigging, our hardhats 
and belt clips, climb into the van 
to ride back to the beach hotel, palm trees 
and piña coladas. Zip-lining bonded us, 
the two grandmas, while younger tourists 
cheered as we hooked up our harnesses 
to zing through rainforest canopy. 
 
I try small talk—Do you like living in Virginia? 
She leans closer, I hate those communists, 
that’s why I had to leave Vietnam. 
She continues, I had a nightmare 
after I left. They found me, sent me  
to a reeducation camp. Her eyes narrow, 
They are not camps. They are jails, 
she hisses. Her voice like a snake winds 
back through memory, tongue sensing 
air for danger. 
 
I change the subject, Does this rain forest   
remind you of home? She looks behind her, 
Yes, it does, then goes on, In South Vietnam  
we had good education, health programs,  
good jobs. I worked for the US Air Force. 
 
She says the word Air Force with her hand 
over her mouth, her voice lowered, 
as if someone in the backseat might hear, 
arrest her. They promised to relocate me. 
That’s how I got to Virginia. 
 
She unfolds her life. At one point she tells me, 
In the US you take your freedom for granted. 
I flashback to standing on the Capitol steps 
holding a candle. 
 
She switches to Commie parables: 
When the communist teach the children math,  
they ask, If you have five fingers and we cut off two,   
how many are left? 
 
In South Vietnam we say oranges.  
 
If you have five oranges and give your mother two  
how many do you have left? 
 
Concerned I might not get the point, 
she continues, The communists ask the children,  
 if you have five men and kill two,  
how many are left? 
 
Brainwashing, she spits. 
Conditioning, I say to soften the brutality. 
 
Yes, conditioning. Her face relaxes, the crinkle lines 
of hate dissolve as if this telling has helped her erase 
what is indelible. 
 
 
              * 
When the van pulls up to the hotel’s groomed 
garden, I flashback to State Street, 
the capital lawn, a zip-line of memories, 
sirens, tear gas, Billy clubs. 
Protest lines angle back to Bascom Hall, 
We don’t take anything 
for granted. 
              When I hear the name 
of a boy I knew in high school 
killed in Nam, I blow out my candle, relight. 
When I recognize another name, 
I blow out my candle, relight. 
I’m surrounded by other students, 
our small exhales extinguish tiny flames, 
our matches reignite the darkness. 

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