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

anyway to leap from the bridge I’ve made of my wrongs look they lied to us no one here was ever ugly look

For as long as I can remember I’ve had a preference for mediocre bodies, including this one.

Nobody’s free without breaking open. I’m not sad, he told me once, laughing, I’m just always here.

what are we going to do now that it hurts when I look at those I love

an older desert where black bones once buried are now words where I wave to you at 2:34 am they survived the blast by becoming shrapnel embedded in my brain which is called learning

I didn’t know god saw in us a failed attempt at heaven.

O human, I’m not mad at you for winning but that you never wished for more.

It’s true I’m not a writer but a faucet underwater.

This boy crying in his car after his shift at McDonald’s on Easter Sunday. The way he wipes his eyes with his shirt as the big trucks blare off the interstate. 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.

sky oh man the aubade left to rot into afternoon when every word was forgotten as soon as the hand moved across the page

I made it out by the skin of my griefs.

To be a dam for damage. My shittyness will not enter the world, I thought, and quickly became my own hero.

How you say what you mean changes what you say.

a loaf of rye is rising out of itself, growing lighter as it takes up more of the world. In humans, we call this Aging. In bread, we call it Proof.

Because a blade of brown rye, multiplied by thousands, makes a purple field.

How you can love the world until there’s nothing left to love but yourself. Then you can stop. Then you can walk away—back into the fog -walled minefield, where the vein in your neck adores you to zero. You can walk away. You can be nothing & still breathing. Believe me.