Excerpt from Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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

Excerpted from Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong. Copyright © 2022 by Ocean Vuong. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.