Time is a Mother

by Ocean Vuong

How else do we return to ourselves but to fold The page so it points to the good part

What we’ll always have is something we lost

I’m on the cliff of myself & these aren’t wings, they’re futures.

Nobody’s free without breaking open.

Time is a mother. Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center. 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. Some call this prayer, I call it watch your mouth.

that the surest shelter was always the thoughts above your head. That it’s fair—it has to be— how our hands hurt us, then give us the world. How you can love the world until there’s nothing left to love but yourself.