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

childhood is only a cage that widens

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

I was one of those people who loves the world most when I’m rock-bottom in my fast car going nowhere.

the way death enters anything—fully & without a trace

I made it out by the skin of my griefs.

I’m trying to be real but it costs too much.

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

There is so much room in a person there should be more of us in here.

But to live like a bullet, to touch people with such intention. To be born going one way, toward everything alive.

the surest shelter was always the thoughts above your head.

our hands hurt us, then give us the world.

You can be nothing & still breathing. Believe me.

if you’re reading this then I survived my life into yours