Thoughts by His Bedside

3 min readDec 3, 2020

The rooster crows at dawn, except this rooster doesn’t crow. In fact, it’s not a rooster at all. But a box. It is just slightly larger than the hand of the Hmong man that listens to its muffled voices of a foreign language distorted, not only in his knowledge, but with static too. The red letters on this electric box reads 6:00.

His mind is awake but his eyes remain closed as he listens lying next to a woman. They lay in bed like they have for over fifty years. Every morning, roughly the same: both waiting for their bodies to catch up to the rise of the day. Her body wakes first. It always has. The night before, her long gray hair was released from the constraints of her elastic. She rolls out of bed and prepares for the new day by tying it back up. The knob, then the hinges, then the floors creak. Her footsteps travel across the special spot in the living room that goes “tha-thump!” — a signal to track where she has traveled. When she goes to the kitchen the pots and pans shifted and clanged just loud enough to know that in a few moments the first meal of the day would be ready. A preparation for the daily ritual.

It wasn’t always like this though. It was different, by distance. No. That’s not the right translation. It was different, by far.

In Laos, the rooster was a rooster and that rooster crowed. The rise of the day was the sun peeking over the horizon among thick jungle hills. Light has not yet broken through the cracks of their bamboo house but the sheen of blue and pink paint the sky and it was time. Her body woke next to the man she had laid with for fifteen years. Every day, roughly the same. She rolled out of bed, her feet kissing the dry clay floor. There are no thumps in this house, no door knobs or walls that creak and crackle. Only the rooster that crows and the perpetual howling winds pushing against a small bamboo house. The house was made with sticks but it did not fall with the wind. There was a thick wooden pillar that supported the house. In a way that pole reminded her of something familiar. Maybe strength. Maybe home.

Thoughts by His Bedside

Written by GillianMay

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