I never started writing to get published. No contract. No invitation. No dream of shelves or reviews. It was just a rainy night. Wind whispered through the cracked window. The room smelled of old wood and something unspoken. I sat at my small desk and realized—I was still alive. And I remembered enough. Enough to tell.
The first page, I didn't know what to write. Should I start with "I was sold"? Or "I was called by a name that wasn't mine"? In the end, I wrote: "I am a witness to something the world has forgotten."
I didn't write fluently. Some nights, I wrote a single line and cried. Some nights, I didn't write at all—just stared at the embroidered cloth and thought of Aunt Mai. I wrote with a shattered memory and a mended heart. But every word—I wrote with truth. No embellishment. No deletion.
After three months, the first draft was done. No perfect structure. No market formula. Just 126 pages—each a stitch. Some still bleeding. Some already healed. Some that never closed.
I sent it to a small publishing house in Hanoi. With no hope. No expectation.
A month later, they replied: "We wish to keep your voice, your silence, and your spaces." They said I didn't write like an author. I wrote like a witness.
On launch day, I said nothing. I stood backstage and watched people turn pages, pause, swallow hard. Some closed the book halfway. Some carried tissues. I didn't blame them. Because I understood—reading someone else's memory also requires courage.
I gave the first copy to my mother. She held it for a long time but didn't open it. That night, she placed her hand on the cover and said: "I'm sorry. Because when you came home, all I could say was 'Be strong.'" I didn't reply. I just held her. Lightly. Like she once held me after I returned from three years of silence.
Beside my bed, the old embroidered cloth still lay. Not to wipe away tears. Not even to hold grief. But to remember who gave me back my voice—and why I must never let it go.