Ocean Vuong

Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.

To be or not to be. That is the question. A question, yes, but not a choice.

Maybe we pray on our knees because god

only listens when we’re this close

to the devil.

How my greatest accolade was to walk

across the Brooklyn Bridge

& not think of flight

You will always remember what you were doing

when it hurts the most

In the body, where everything has a price,
I was a beggar. On my knees,
I watched, through the keyhole, not
the man showering, but the rain
falling through him: guitar strings snapping
over his globed shoulders.
He was singing, which is why
I remember it. His voice—
it filled me to the core
like a skeleton. Even my name
knelt down inside me, asking
to be spared.
He was singing. It is all I remember.
For in the body, where everything has a price,
I was alive. I didn’t know
there was a better reason.
That one morning, my father would stop
—a dark colt paused in downpour—
& listen for my clutched breath
behind the door. I didn’t know the cost
of entering a song—was to lose
your way back.
So I entered. So I lost.
I lost it all with my eyes
wide open

the faithful work of drowning.

O mother,
O minute hand, teach me
how to hold a man the way thirst
holds water.

If you must know anything, know that you were born because no one else was coming

Then, as if breathing, the sea swelled beneath us. If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.