The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

Though it was true the boy had run out of paths to take, out of ways to salvage his failures, he never planned on jumping off King Philip’s Bridge that evening.

There was no shame, the boy thought, in losing yourself to something as natural as gravity—where one doesn’t jump but is pulled, blameless, toward the sea. If nothing else, this would hurt his mother least.

“When does anybody die?” she shrugged. “When God says Well done.”

Naming your child after electronic devices was not uncommon among people in refugee camps back then.

The kind of day where you can fill in your scars with Magic Marker and tell yourself you’re normal—and it might be true.

he would come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody’s son.

People put on this facade of strength. They act like they have a purpose and a mission and their whole life is supposed to lead to this grand fucking thesis of who they

“They’re just scared somebody will look at them bad and judge ’em. Scared somebody will see through the fake-ass armor they’ve wasted their whole lives building. And for what?

We all want some story to make it bearable so we can keep living long enough to work our asses off until we’re in the ground,

You can be a person doing what you do every day and that’s fucking enough.

“People aren’t so bad. They’re just wounded little kids trying to heal. And that makes them tell each other stupid stories,”

Because to discard is to move on.