Hey, who lit the March fire!

And fortunately, where I live, on Quang Trung Street, there is a kapok tree. The tree always makes me, as I once wrote, have a brilliant start. So that I can never forget that inside me there is a little bird still thirsting for the words of the river, the words of the dike, the words of the rice plants taking green roots in the March fields, the words of crabs and fish under the wet mud, the words of the drizzle soaking the bumpy road with buffalo footprints...

I also have a personal memory of the cotton tree season on the street where I live. That was my father’s last flower season. At that time, my father was suffering from an incurable disease. Many brain tumors made him unable to walk steadily. After the radiation treatments, he moved in with my small family and struggled to learn to walk. My mother was always by his side. She held his hand, letting him lean on her thin shoulder, and slowly like that, they walked with stories on the sidewalk. My father always pointed to his destination under the cotton tree on the street. Every time he reached the cotton tree, he would sit and rest for a while, then turn back to the house. My father wanted to see that red flower color, probably because he missed his hometown, probably because it was a way for him to believe. He believed that bright signal was reminding him of his determination and victory… I will never forget that image, my parents walking together on the street, under the suffocating red flower color, in the hazy dust and fog. Then, the following flower seasons, my mother passed by the kapok tree, alone, and silently looked up and shed tears.

Since the beginning of March, every day I passed by that kapok tree, I waited. Waiting for the brilliant signal to emerge from its rough branches. “It won’t be long before the kapok flowers startle you again!”- my close friend, as if she understood my feelings, said. Then, one morning, I found myself startled again when I saw the dazzling flames on the branches.

So, another flower season.

How many people passed by the street, as well as how many people passed by the dikes, the communal houses' yards..., but few people looked at the tree standing silently with its moldy, thorny bark, its branches reaching out like seemingly gloomy hands, spreading out to the sky sprinkled with drizzle in January and February. Only when the red color burst forth did everyone become surprised. It did not allow for oblivion, did not allow anyone to be indifferent. Flowers are gifts. Flowers speak out loud, wanting to speak. For those who know the news. For those who know how to wait. To warm up the cold, long days.

I don't know why the cotton tree often stands alone in a certain space of the countryside. Sometimes it is bare at the village entrance, sometimes on a dike, sometimes on a river wharf... It always has an ancient and mysterious look, that's why. It seems to love loneliness. No, to be more exact, it chooses loneliness. Chooses loneliness to burn red. Chooses loneliness to silently ignite an awakening. I always think of the girl in a story I read. The girl is intelligent, delicate and full of pride, when saying goodbye to the person she loves, she chose a color of shirt, chose the most brilliant lipstick. She walked with the most graceful, graceful steps. So that forever, the man who lost her would regret. The cotton tree, it seems, also carries the image of a woman with such a fierce and proud personality.

But without my connection, the cotton tree itself is associated with a wonderful fairy tale about a woman's love. The girl, missing her lover, bowed down and begged the Jade Emperor to let the tree grow roots so she could climb up to find her lover's shadow, wanting the red cloth that the young man tied to her hand before ascending to heaven to turn into a flower so that her lover from the deep sky could recognize that signal and think of her. And certainly, when the girl threw herself down to create the story of the cotton tree, her blood and love blossomed, not simply a cloth.

Not only that, the cotton tree flowers have burned a word of consolation for people's fate every season of "March 8th" when the harvest season is long and precarious. I miss the dike swaying in the sun, the shadow of the old lady's brown shirt going to the pagoda, the small brown dot seems to melt into the dike filled with the red color of the tall cotton tree. Few people know that, between the tree holes, or on the branches and leaves, many flocks of birds fly back to stop, build nests chirping as if there were no seasons of famine. I miss the day of sending my sister across the river, with the color of flowers as if they were forever standing, watching the shadow of the person who got married on the ferry. Later, in the poem I wrote, there was a sadness that never faded: "I invite sadness to wander with the sun/ Looking for my sister's maidenhood that I lost on the Seventeen River/ Why on a happy day are your eyes so deep?/ So deep that they sink the boat?"

That is why so many poets have written about the color of that flower with unceasing obsessions. It shines “from the bottom of the deep sadness” of the talented poet and playwright Luu Quang Vu, that is love, that is the “deep sap in the tree” – that is “the red cotton flower of my heart that never fades”. That is “the red cotton flower waiting in the painful sun” in the poetry of the multi-faceted woman Phan Huyen Thu...

But whether it ignites sadness or joy in each person’s memory, this remains unchanged, that spring is more splendid thanks to the red cotton flowers. And flowers, or people, are life.

Rice has a short flower life. For those who are slow, just in time to see the flowers on the branches, regretting that the season has passed. For those who do not live fully with the season, the flowers have wrapped up their memories and fallen down. The five-petaled flowers, spinning in the wind, falling down, red along the roadside, as if to say, I have lived my brilliant life. The brilliance and splendor cannot last forever. The color is like blood, like vermillion, like the red of the guts.

Dear, the foggy month of March has arrived, don’t miss the flower season. Take a day to slowly look at the city, take a day to slowly run along the Lam River dikes, to be startled: Who is lighting the fire of March!

Ha Giang - Ngoc Quy - Thuy Vinh