I Snow Theory This is the best day ever I haven't killed a thing since 2006 The darkness out there, wet as a newborn I dog-eared the book & immediately thought of masturbation How else do we return to ourselves but to fold The page so it points to the good part Another country burning on TV What we'll always have is something we lost In the snow, the dry outline of my mother Promise me you won't vanish again, I said She lay there awhile, thinking it over One by one the houses turned off their lights I lay down over her outline, to keep her true Together we made an angel It looked like something being destroyed in a blizzard I haven't killed a thing since Dear Peter they treat me well here they don't make me forget the world like you promised but oh well I'm back inside my head where it's safe cause I'm not there the xanax dissolves & I'm okay this bed no longer stranded at sea the door coming closer now & I'm gonna dock some days I make it to the reading room they have one flew over the cuckoo's nest can you believe it but hey I think I'm getting better though I learned in the courtyard yesterday 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 Peter I feel sorry for anyone who has to die despite the fact I was fifteen once but who knows I tell lies to keep from falling away from me you wouldn't believe it a man in the back of a walgreens once said I can make you look like something true fuck he said oh fuck you're so much like my little brother so I let him kiss me for nothing oh well 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 Peter I'm wearing your sea-green socks to stay close I swear I'll learn to swim when I'm out once & for all the body floats for a reason maybe we can swim right up to it grab on kick us back to shore Peter I think I'm doing it right now finally maybe I'm winning even if it just looks like my fingers are shaking Skinny Dipping some boys have ghosted from this high but I wanna go down on you anyway to leap from the bridge I've made of my wrongs look they lied to us no one here was ever ugly look if you see me then I prayed correctly I leapt from the verb taking off my best shirt this rag & rage a tulip too late 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 hands for good oh it should be enough to live & die alone with music on your tongue to jump from anywhere & make it home to be warm & full of nothing oh I kept my hope -blue Vans on this whole time to distract you from my flat ass did it work oh my people I thought the fall would kill me but it only made me real Beautiful Short Loser Stand back, I'm a loser on a winning streak. I got your wedding dress on backward, playing air guitar in these streets. I taste my mouth the most & what a blessing. The most normal things about me are my shoulders. You've been warned. Where I'm from it's only midnight for a second & the trees look like grandfathers laughing in the rain. For as long as I can remember I've had a preference for mediocre bodies, including yours. 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. Green voices in the rain, green rain in the voices. Oh no. The sadness is intensifying. How rude. Hey [knocks on my skull], can we go home now? That one time Jaxson passed out beside a triple stack of jumbo pancakes at Denny's after top surgery. I can't believe I lost my tits, he said a minute before, smiling through tears. The sadness in him ends in me tonight. It ends tonight! I shouted to the cop who pulled us over for dreaming. I'm not high, officer, I just don't believe in time. Tomorrow, partly cloudy with a chance. I'm done talking, sir, I'm saying what I feel. Inside my head, the war is everywhere. I'm on the cliff of myself & these aren't wings, they're futures. For as long as I can remember my body was the mayor's nightmare. Now I'm a beautiful short loser dancing in the green. You think I'll need a gun where we're going? Can you believe my uncle worked at the Colt factory for fifteen years only to use a belt at the end? Talk about discipline. Talk about good lord. 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. Nobody's free without breaking open. I'm not sad, he told me once, laughing, I'm just always here. See, officer? Magic is real-we all disappear. Why aren't you laughing? No, not beauty-but you & I outliving it. Which is more so. Somehow, I got me for days. Got this late light in the yard, leaving blood on the bone -colored fence. This thrash of spring we drown in to stay awhile & mean it. I mean it when I say I'm mostly male. That I recall every follicle in the failure the way they'll remember god after religion: alone, impossible, & good. I know. I know the room you've been crying in is called America. I know the door is not invented yet. Like death, we'll be useful at the end. Finally, after years of it, I'm now a professional loser. I'm crushing it in losses. I'm mopping the floor where Jaxson's drain bags leaked on his way to bed. I'm done talking, officer, I'm dancing in the rain with a wedding dress & it makes sense. Because my uncle decided to leave this world, intact. Because taking a piece of my friend away from him made him more whole. Because where I'm from the trees look like family laughing in my head. Because I am the last of my kind at the beginning of hope. Because what I did with my one short beautiful life- was lose it on a winning streak. Old Glory Knock 'em dead, big guy. Go in there guns blazing, buddy. You crushed at the show. No, it was a blowout. No, a massacre. Total overkill. We tore them a new one. My son's a beast. A lady -killer. Straight shooter, he knocked her up. A bombshell blonde. You'll blow them away. Let's bag the broad. Let's spit-roast the faggot. Let's fuck his brains out. That girl's a grenade. It was like Nam down there. I'd still slam it though. I'd smash it good. I'm cracking up. It's hilarious. You truly murdered. You had me dying over here. Bro, for real though, I'm dead. You Guys brushing my teeth at two in the morning I say over my shoulder you guys you guys I'm serious what are we going to make of this mess my voice muffled with wintergreen foam what are we going to do now that it hurts when I look at those I love like you two you who have been through so much together the thick & skin of it I'm proud of you both I say as the foam pinkens through my lips I'm told our blood is green but touches the world with endings my name a place where I've waited for collisions you guys are you listening I'm sorry for being useful only in language are you still with me I ask as I peer into the tub where I placed them gently down the two white rabbits I'd found on Harris St the way back from Emily's where we watched American Dad! on her mom's birthday her mom who would've been 56 this year we ate rocky road in bowls with blue tulips I'm too tired she said to be this happy & we laughed without moving our hands perhaps the rabbits are lovers or sisters sometimes it's hard to tell gender from breathing earlier I had scooped them from the pavement they were crushed but only kinda one had a dented half-face the other's back flattened like a courage sock I cradled them wetly in my sweatshirt but now the tub is a red world save for the silent island of fur flickering in my fugitive words guys I say just wait for me alright just wait a bit longer I swear I'll leave this place spotless when I'm done I say reaching back to my wisdom teeth forgetting it's been four years since they're gone Dear Sara What's the point of writing if you're just gonna force a bunch of ants to cross a white desert? -Cousin Sara, age 7 & if you follow these ants they'll lead you back to stone tablets 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 but maybe I shouldn't talk like this maybe I should start over Sara I messed up I'm trying to stay clean but my hands are monsters who believe in magic Sara the throat is also an inkwell black oil wrung through your father's fingers after a day beneath the Buick say heartbreak & nothing will shatter say Stonehenge & watch the elephants sleep like boulders blurred in Serengeti rain it doesn't have to make sense to be real-your aunt Rose gone two years now like a trick they forgot to finish & the air holds your voice as it holds its own vanishing maybe you are the true soldier ant hoarder of what's so massive it could crush you into a twitching comma Sara your name sharpens daily against the marble of your mother's teeth there are sparks in every calling & called we press our faces to the womb till we're jokes on our way to cracking up & maybe you're right little ant queen with your shoes the shade of dirty paper white desert your pink & blue pens untouched after all who can stare at so many ruins & call it reading this family of ants fossilized on the page you slam the book shut look out at the leafless trees doused in red April rain where none of us are children long enough to love it American Legend So I was driving with my old man. The day wasted save for the cobalt haze closing around us. We were on our way to kill our dog, Susan. I mean, we had to bring her to the clinic to put her down, this murder or maybe they meant put her in the ground-though I knew Susan would be ashed in the incinerator out back. Puffs of smoke, little ghost poodles. Where was I going with this? Right-the car, the rain, the legend of joy & pain. My old man & I, the Ford big enough for us to never touch. & maybe I meant to make the hairpin turn too hard. & the thing flipped like a new law, going 80. Maybe I wanted, at last, to feel him against me-& it worked. As the colors spun through the windshield, wild metal clanking our shoulders, the sudden wetness warm everywhere, he slammed into me & we hugged for the first time in decades. It was perfect & wrong, like money on fire. The skin around his neck so soft, his aftershave somehow summer. It lasted not a second but he was smiling, his teeth already half-gone, as if someone wiped them away to make room for something truer. Put it down on the page, son, he said one night, after telling me why he did what he did with his life, shitfaced on Hennessy. We were sitting at the kitchen table before his shift at the sock factory. His eyes: raindrops in a nightmare. I touched him, then let go. The car stopped rolling, we hung upside down as things dripped. Steam or breath. I did what any boy would do after getting exactly what he wanted: I kissed my father. He grinned I think. His pupils elsewhere. I reached back, unlatched the cage. The dog stepped out, sniffed my old man, still warm, then ran into the trees, into her second future. I walked from the wreck till the yards became years, the dirt road a city, until my face became this face & the rain washed the gasoline clean from my fingers. I found a payphone in the heart of the poem & called you collect to say all this knowing it won't make a difference, only more. So hello, hi, the blood inside my hands is now inside the world. Words, the prophets tell us, destroy nothing they can't rebuild. I did it to hold my father, to free my dog. It's an old story, Ma. Anyone can tell it. The Last Dinosaur When they ask me what it's like, I tell them imagine being born in a hospice in flames. As my brothers melted, I stood on one leg, raised my arms, shut my eyes & thought: tree tree tree as death spared me. I didn't know god saw in us a failed attempt at heaven. Didn't know my eyes had three shades of white but only one image of my mother. She's standing under an ancient redwood, sad that her time on earth is all she owns. O human, I'm not mad at you for winning but that you never wished for more. Emperor of language, why didn't you master No without forgetting Yes? Sure, we can make out if you want, but I'm warning you- it's a lot. Sometimes I think gravity was like: To be brutally honest . . . & then never stopped talking. I guess what I mean is that I ate the apple not because the man lied when he said I was born of his rib but that I wanted to fill myself with its hunger for the ground, where the bones of my people Excerpted from Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.