Time is a Mother

by Ocean Vuong

I guess what I mean is that I ate the apple not because the man lied when he said I was born of his rib but that I wanted to fill myself with its hunger for the ground, where the bones of my people still dream of me.

It’s true I’m not a writer but a faucet underwater. When the flood comes I’ll raise my hand so they know who to shoot. The sky flashes. The sea yearns. I myself am hell. Everyone’s here.

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. Our sorrow Midas touched. Napalm with a rainbow afterglow.