The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

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

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.

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.

This is nowhere in the middle of their lives, yet closer to death than they’ve ever been.

For most people, their ghost is inside them, waiting to float out when they die. But my ghost is in pieces.” He pointed with his chin at the scattered trees. “It’s all over the place, caught in all the spots where I snagged myself.”

the memory gone but its sadness remaining, like smoke from an invisible fire.