The first time I was in Hà Nội I swiped a cork coaster from a café and couldn’t decide if I was a rebel or a criminal in a country where everything I saw made me fall in love. I wanted a souvenir of when I asked for steamed milk for my coffee thinking I was finally an adult having found language to express my desire. The way I walked down the street with my hand in my pocket as if to make sure I still had the one ring feeling the weight of what I could lose knowing I am helpless to protect myself against myself. When you kissed my stomach I trembled and tried to shrink into a fist. Your mouth was a refusal of every story I believed about my body your mouth was a baleen whale waiting to devour my truths your mouth was a cave I yearned to get lost in. Sometimes I go out the door with toothpaste on my hair and I fall up the steps instead of down and burn my tongue slurping phở because I couldn’t wait. I wonder if this is the price for being a thief for all my slight mischiefs for thinking I was brave enough to take what I wanted. I feel the ever-seeing eye of my life bore into my back. Here are your teeth, I am letting them sink onto me.