C.L. Hoang

Long Night *

C.L. Hoang

In the sticky dark the heater breathes the floor groans. I hear my brain churning over image upon searing image: hospitals aheap in rubble; pregnant women, raised to their feet, on the run; children dragging their baby luggage gripping their mothers’ hands tight; blind old man trapped in a basement listening for the deadly whistle in simmering despair; snow descending, impassive angel eerily unblemished on black body bags in the middle of the streets. A rerun in my mind of some old World War movie? V-Day, alas, is nowhere in sight. The heater breathes. The floor groans. Time tiptoes on. The night sighs.

* Following reports of a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine

C.L. Hoang was born and raised in Vietnam during the war and came to America in the 1970's. He graduated from Ohio University and the University of California, Berkeley and earns his living in San Diego as an engineer, but dabbles in the pleasure of writing every chance he gets.