Time is a Mother

by Ocean Vuong

which meant I was a murderer of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god was stillness.

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

in summer’s teeth like the blade in a guillotine I won’t pick a side my name a past tense where I left

my people my people I thought the fall would kill me but it only made me real

I taste my mouth the most & what a blessing.

Tell me this, how come the past tense is always longer? Is the memory of a song the shadow of a sound or is that too much?

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I imagine Van Gogh singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” into his cut ear & feeling peace.

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.

damn.

Nobody’s free without breaking open.