In that hospital room, they cut one of two things that bound us. The one that remains is this. The Vietnamese words for mother, ghost, and horse are, to my untrained ears, indistinguishable. I know I’m her daughter because I swallow love like a knife. 
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My mother cleans my scraped knee with a cotton ball and rubbing alcohol. I am once more a little girl. Bike mangled in the drive. Cicada chorus in the height of summer. Colorless wet, that acrid smell, the sting that follows. I can still hear her say it. You know it’s working if it hurts.