#time is a mother

“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.”

— Ocean Vuong, Tell Me Something Good

— Ocean Vuong, Ars Poetica as the Maker

— Ocean Vuong, Reasons for Staying

— Ocean Vuong, The Punctum

How else do we return

to ourselves but to fold

the page so it points to

the good part.

- Ocean Vuong, “Time is a Mother”

lifeinpoetry:

                                                    & we’re just too tired
                                           to walk home we’re
                                                     just two boys lying

                  in the snow &
you’re smiling because the stars
                            are just stars & you know

                   we’ll only live once
                          this time

—Ocean Vuong, from “Dear T,” Time Is a Mother

metamorphesque:

— Reasons for Staying, Ocean Vuong

[text ID: Because this body is my last address.]

The Bull, Ocean Vuong

I didn’t
want him. I didn’t want him to
be beautiful—but needing beauty
to be more than hurt gentle
enough to hold, I
reached for him. I reached—not the bull—
but the depths. Not an answer but
an entrance the shape of
an animal. Like me.

—Ocean Vuong, from “The Bull,” Time Is a Mother