The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

Somebody goes ahead and dies and all of a sudden you become a box for them, he thought, you store these things that no one has ever seen and you go on living like that, your head a coffin to keep memories of the dead alive. But what do you do with that kind of box? Where do you put it down?

“Yes,” he gasped into the dark, like a boy seeing his name in ink for the first time, “there’s so much room in a person, there should be more of us in here. There shouldn’t be just one.”