The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

“It’s a root. And roots prevent you from getting the blues.” She picked one from the bowl; it gleamed under the kitchen light. “You see, carrots become bright orange because it’s so dark in the ground. They make their own light because the sun never reaches that far—like those fish in the ocean who glow from nothing? So when you eat it, you take in the carrot’s will to go upward. To heaven.”

Hai hit Sony on the shoulder. “Would you quit with that Civil War stuff already?” “He can’t help it. It’s his thing. He’s acoustic.” BJ pointed at her own head and gave Hai a knowing look.

How strange to feel something so close to mercy, whatever that was, and stranger still that it should be found in here of all places, at the end of a road of ruined houses by a toxic river. That among a pile of salvaged trash, 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.

It did not have a name, this slaughter, and yet your loved ones were being slowly erased, even teachers and lunch ladies overdosing overnight, then cremated without ceremony, their faces soon existing only in your mind. Those were the times, those who lived through it would say, years later, not knowing what it was they meant.

You lose the dead as the earth takes them, but the living you still have a say in. And so he said it. And so he lied.

Ever since he was little, it bothered him that you can never recall the exact moment you fall asleep, as though someone turns you off just before your mind fades, as if they knew you wouldn’t choose it, that you’d stay awake if you saw sleep coming like the shadow of some colossal wave falling over you.

Because to remember is to fill the present with the past, which meant that the cost of remembering anything, anything at all, is life itself. We murder ourselves, he thought, by remembering.

“The reason why it’s so good,” she lifted her head, “is because it’s a lie. And incredible things can come out of lies. Just ask good ole Uncle Sam.”

“Oh, my poor naive little boy. Once upon a time, they also said women in Salem had to be burned alive because science said they were witches. And then that science became law. Now they use science to get people to bomb each other. Like I said, rook,” she suppressed a smile, “everything in this world is Star Wars. Good versus evil. Dark and light. There’s the Jedi and then there’s the Empire. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi, and we’re running out of time.”

Though it had no source he could name, there was something beyond reach, a gleaming heat, the way one knows, at times, where the moon hangs in the sky on an overcast night. Or a word existing before its definition—and like all things without meaning, it made no sense.

What good is beauty, any beauty, if nobody wins?

See? That’s the only real thing about me, that I’m sitting here next to you at this bus stop. That’s it. Everything else, what I do, what I’ve done, the goals and promises, they’re all, like, ghosts.

“But truths don’t ever change. Only lies do.”

Entire lifetimes seemed within his grasp, and producible within this one, then vaporized with his breath fogging over his head.

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?

He wanted too much of one feeling—and I guess his heart gave out because of it. I don’t think we’re made to hold too much of any one thing.”

How come every time he said anything important, it felt like it was coming from somewhere else, from a cesspool collected from shitty movies at the base of his skull?