Time is a Mother

by Ocean Vuong

I’m still afraid of butterflies how they move so much like a heart on fire

I know it doesn’t make sense this pill a bone-shard of will unwilling me

childhood is only a cage that widens like this sunlight honest through the clinic window where a girl on methadone claps alone at a beige butterfly knocking its head up the beige wall

Inside my head, the war is everywhere. I’m on the cliff of myself & these aren’t wings, they’re futures.

O wind-broke wanderer, widow of hope & ha-has. O sister, dropped seed—help me— I was made to die but I’m here to stay.

I want to take care of our planet because I need a beautiful graveyard.

My favorite kind of darkness is the one inside us,

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.

Waterline If I should wake & the Ark the Ark already gone If there was one shivering thing at my side If the snow in his hair was all that was left of the fire If we ran through the orchard with our mouths wide open & still too small for amen If I nationed myself in the shadow of a colossal wave If only to hold on by opening— by kingdom come give me this one eighth day let me enter this nearly-gone yes the way death enters anything—fully & without a trace

Unlike feelings, blood gets realer when you feel it. I’m trying to be real but it costs too much.

Because my uncle never killed himself—but simply died, on purpose.

Because I stopped apologizing into visibility. Because this body is my last address.

if reading is to live in two worlds at once why is he not here