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 this one.
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.
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
I know the door is not invented yet.
Finally, after years, 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
Because where I’m from the trees look like family
Because I am the last of my kind at the beginning of hope.
Because what I did with my one short beautiful life—
– Beautiful Short Loser, Ocean Vuong. From Time is a Mother
