Wake up with the city

The city - just roads, trees, just sidewalks sometimes crowded with shops, but love is there. Love for the city permeates us even though we were not born here, but came, grew up and shared our joys and sorrows there.

Photo: GC

Surely sometimes you suddenly drive out on the street. Not because you need to go somewhere, but because you just like to go out on the street in the afternoon. Although Tran Phu Street is always crowded with vehicles, the street is very cool in the afternoon because the buildings provide shade from the sun. Letting the vehicles squeeze in, we leisurely walk down the street that we have passed by countless times. This season, we suddenly see the lim xet trees blooming. Then suddenly we feel sorry for the whole street of yellow flowers being swept away by people with brooms.

City is a general word, just like tomorrow, according to the new arrangement, it will become a ward, still the place where we live, where we are happy and sad, and that place blurs many unforgettable memories. To walk through a street, thinking to yourself that it has been a long time since you visited this place. To when a small shop hangs a sign saying it is closed, suddenly it feels like you have just lost a familiar place.

The city has roads like the roundabout to Chut, around An Vien area, then to Cua Be, flowing out to Vo Thi Sau. Walk and admire the bougainvillea trees planted along the road, or the lingering smell of fish sauce. It could be the very long Luong Dinh Cua street, in the spring, passing by the yards of houses with yellow apricot blossoms as if spring were there. To remember the time when I couldn’t resist a blooming apricot blossom tree in a house, so I opened the gate and stepped in, the owner enthusiastically invited me to tea under that apricot blossom tree.

The city, sometimes is the small road we used to go to school, is the house with the girl we have a crush on, is the mossy tiled roof with vines happily clinging to it, as if waiting for a rain to come and be reborn. The city is the day we go out in the street and encounter a sudden rain, quickly taking shelter in a porch, chatting absentmindedly with strangers whose names we don't know, and then when the rain stops, we all get lost in the crowd.

There are mornings when I go out in the wind, in the scent of flowers blooming secretly at night. When I go out in the morning when the sun is still sleeping behind the mountain top, I see countless people like me walking like that. To go out to the sea to wait for the dawn, the beauty of the sun in a new day is so splendid.

The city, where there could be a street corner that we missed in our youth, a school that opens its doors to let students chirp like birds into class. There, the rows of trees that were once tiny, have grown over time, spreading shade over the entire street.

This morning I went to the beach. The waves still lapped at the white sand. I looked at my footprints on the sand, remembering the old footprints that were erased by the waves. A drop of seawater accidentally splashed onto my face. The seawater is like that, forever salty.

KHUE VIET TRUONG

Source: https://baokhanhhoa.vn/van-hoa/sang-tac/202505/thuc-day-cung-thanh-pho-fcc2562/