Origin Story

Paul Christiansen

A current-tumbled stone,
the story’s been told so many times, it’s
smoothed of all its corners.

Âu Cơ and Lạc Long Quân.
She the beautiful mountain fairy,
he the powerful water dragon.

A monster pounced as she traveled.
He rescued her, ushering in familiar tropes – 
lust, love, marriage, family.

In the same way time dulls a story,
it sedates a romance; he didn’t want
to leave his coasts, she longed for her peaks.

They say it was the world’s first amicable divorce.
She took half their 100 children to the highlands, 
he kept half on the beaches. 

This is the origin of the Vietnamese people.
But what’s been lost in the retellings? The pang 
she feels in her gut when crossing riverbeds?

How he must resist the urge to stomp
each sandcastle their children build
that resembles a cliff?

Do they both gaze into the sky,
sighing at the sight of wind
that whisks clouds apart

as it slips untethered across the earth?
Would they trade everything for
such unattachment?