Time is a Mother

by Ocean Vuong

Inside my head, the war is everywhere.

Maybe he saw that a small thing moving through a large thing is more like a bird in a cage than a word in the mouth.

I’m not sad, he told me once, laughing, I’m just always here.

I know. I know the room you’ve been crying in is called America. I know the door is not invented yet.

Because what I did with my one short beautiful life— was lose it on a winning streak.

up I’m trying to stay clean but my hands are monsters who believe in magic

I didn’t know god saw in us a failed attempt at heaven.

I was made to die but I’m here to stay.

My favorite kind of darkness is the one inside us, I want to tell him. &: I like the way your apron makes it look like you’re ready for war. I too am ready for war.

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.

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.

Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American letters, turns to gold.

I can say it was gorgeous now, my harm, because it belonged to no one else.

In my language, the one I recall now only by closing my eyes, the word for love is Yêu. And the word for weakness is Yếu. How you say what you mean changes what you say.