The road to Tonle Sap is nothing but dust—red, fine, rising like smoke with each passing cart and scooter. It sticks to skin, coats lungs, settles in the folds of shirts and the creases of eyes that have seen too much, too young.
And walking that road, barefoot and shirtless, is a boy with no shorts. Just a long, tattered T-shirt hanging past his knees, the color lost to sun and time. His body is thin—sharp elbows, swollen belly, knees dark from falls and climbs. He moves like someone used to heat, to hunger, to being unseen.
His name is Vannak, though no one calls him that here. They call him “kon knea”—poor child—or sometimes nothing at all. He belongs to no one and everywhere. The road is his path, his playground, his burden. He walks it daily, back and forth between the floating village and the market, carrying baskets, sometimes plastic bottles, sometimes just himself.
He walks past tourists in air-conditioned vans, past fishermen mending nets on crates, past girls washing dishes in river water the color of old tea. He walks past monks collecting alms, past cows too skinny to care, past roadside vendors who know better than to shoo him away.
The sun presses down like a weight, but he does not slow.
No sandals. No hat. No shame.
Sometimes he finds coins. Sometimes he is given leftovers in banana leaf, which he folds carefully and shares with a younger sibling waiting in the shade of a stilt house. Sometimes he just finds quiet—a patch of bamboo shadow, a still puddle where he can see his reflection ripple and forget the day.
There is no school for him, not this year. Maybe not ever.
But he knows how to balance a sack on his head, how to call out to buffalo in the right tone, how to dodge trucks and read clouds.
He knows that Tonle Sap rises and falls, and life rises and falls with it.
And still—he smiles.
Not often. But when he does, it’s sudden and radiant.
Like cracked sunlight through wood slats.
Like a boy who knows that even if he owns nothing,
his feet still carry him forward.
Down the dusty road.
Toward the lake.
Toward something only he can name.