the warrior and the world

my father spent his life preparing me to arrive in this world like a warrior.

years later, when we went drinking with his friends, he had almost stopped introducing me as his daughter. instead, he would gesture toward me with that familiar pride in his voice and say, this one is my warrior.

he placed so many hopes inside me. perhaps too many. perhaps everything he had once wanted for himself. all because he wanted my life to be brighter, larger, more radiant than the little neighborhood of thatched roofs where i had been born.

after my father died, the world somehow became smaller.

and after that, the world became a place where people only recognized Alexander Hamilton from a banknote and had never heard of Yersin, where the words of the Trưng Sisters had become something that does not matter anymore.

seventeen years later, i am still trying to understand how one man could die and take so much of the horizon with him.

and his warrior, still marching.