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 whereI 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
Copyright © 2022 by Ocean Vuong, Time is a Mother, Penguin Books
