A review by porgyreads
Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

challenging dark hopeful reflective tense slow-paced

5.0

Inside my head the water is everywhere. I’m on the cliff of myself & these aren’t wings, they’re futures. 

It doesn’t have to make sense to be real

Your name sharpens daily against the marble of your mothers teeth three are sparks in every calling

None of us are children long enough to love it 

It was perfect and wrong like money on fire

& your face at the window a thumbprint left over from whose god? 

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

The flakes going up to thicken God’s pillow for his never ending slumber

So I gathered fistfuls of ash, dark as ink, hammered them into narrow into a skull thick enough to keep the gentle curse of dreams.

Yes, I aimed for mercy - but came only close as building a cage around the heart. Shutters over the eyes. 

Doctor - I mean lord - 

Then he kissed me as if returning a porcelain shard to my cheek.

I remembered my life the way an axe handle, mid swing, remembers the tree.