“This is how she found us/ the past draped about us like a cloak” –Diana Khoi Nguyen

 

When history had not been made yet,

when the outcome was nothing but a thought,

a raindrop of potential,

not even a probability, but a possibility still.

Then. 

When history had not been made yet. 

I wonder if the men whose hands 

had not yet pressed the buttons

trembled.

It should have been everything to do 

with anticipation–

not of glory

but of cells mutations

of Native land taken

of fear like a cloak over the world.