Time is a Mother

by Ocean Vuong

Given another chance, I’d pick the life where I play the piano in a room with no roof. Broken keys, Bach sonata like footsteps fast down the stairs as my father chases my mother through New England’s endless leaves. Maybe I saw a boy in a black apron crying in a Nissan the size of a monster’s coffin & knew I could never be straight. Maybe, like you, I was one of those people who loves the world most when I’m rock-bottom in my fast car going nowhere.

maybe I can build a boy out of the silences inside maybe we can cease without dying fuck without tears falling into the truck stop urinal & we’re just too tired to walk home we’re just two boys lying in the snow & you’re smiling because the stars are just stars & you know we’ll only live once this time

Hey. I used to be a fag now I’m a checkbox. The pen tip jabbed in my back, I feel the mark of progress. I will not dance alone in the municipal graveyard at midnight, blasting sad songs on my phone, for nothing. I promise you, I was here. I felt things that made death so large it was indistinguishable from air—and I went on destroying inside it like wind in a storm.

I can say it was gorgeous now, my harm, because it belonged to no one else. To be a dam for damage. My shittyness will not enter the world, I thought, and quickly became my own hero. Do you know how many hours I’ve wasted watching straight boys play video games? Enough. Time is a mother. Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center.

The cake on the table, air returning to the boy’s pursed lips as the seven candles, one by one, begin to light, and the wish returns to his head where it’s truer for never being touched by language. I am starting to root for him, on his way to dust.