Tenderness
To live a more daring life, I need to kill the tourism development board in my brain. I think I need to cut up a whole durian on public transit and fondle each palm of pungent flesh, let yellow strings drip down my chin. My grandparents’ neighbor gave us the durian she grew this past summer. Sitting across from my dad for the first time in three years—and before that, a decade—he said durian did not grow well this year. Something about the shortage of rainfall. An ex-girlfriend said the key to contentment is to let go of worldly attachments, limit the reasons for suffering. I said I couldn’t let go of desire. She said she could. And so we parted. We once licked durian from each others’ mouths. I was once so starved for touch I gazed upon a reclining, golden Buddha in a sacred temple, fifty times my size, and thought, “Eh, he’s quite hot.” I’m a shit Buddhist, chewed with want crawling up the spine. Some days, I’ll catch the eye of a stranger who is also waiting for the pedestrian signal on the other side of the road and think, “What are we?” Walking is the most tender form of transportation; it surprises me every time I find calluses. My dad’s mother, my Khun Ya, died at the end of summer. The only memory I have of her is the back of her knees against a rocking chair. The monks walk barefoot every morning through my grandparents’ neighborhood in Nonthaburi. At the market, the durian seller cuts off a piece of flesh and lets us taste it for flavor. My Khun Yai haggles like a professional while I’m just relieved by the sweetness. I’ve only met my dad at shopping malls, so I now associate our reunion with commerce. In the safety of my apartment, I track the monks’ Walk for Peace on Google Maps when I remember to, which isn’t often. My mom tells me to eat durian in my room because my stepdad couldn’t stand the smell. Smell transcends borders, tenderly colors the air with yellow. My favorite scent in the world is still that.
Para Vadhahong is an MFA candidate at the University of Washington. They have been published in Shenandoah Literary, Palette Poetry, DVAN, Sine Theta, Honey Literary, and others. They are the winner of Meridians’ Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award (2024), Palette Poetry's Sappho Prize (2023), and Salt Hill Journal's Arthur Flowers Flash Fiction Prize (2022). They are the Editor-in-Chief of On Prayer, a community anthology published by The Seventh Wave. You can read their work at paravadhahong.weebly.com.
