Always & Forever
Ocean Vuong


Open this when you need me most,
                        he said, as he slid the shoe box, wrapped

in duct tape, beneath my bed. His thumb,
                        still damp from the shudder between mother's

thighs, kept circling the mole above my brow.
                        The devil's eye blazed between his teeth

or was he lighting a joint? It doesn't matter. Tonight
                        I wake & mistake the bathwater wrung

from mother's hair for his voice. I open
                        the shoe box dusted with seven winters

& here, sunk in folds of yellowed news
                        -paper, lies the Colt .45 — silent & heavy

as an amputated hand. I hold the gun
                        & wonder if an entry wound in the night

would make a hole wide as morning. That if
                        I looked through it, I would see the end of this

sentence. Or maybe just a man kneeling
                        at the boy's bed, his grey overalls reeking of gasoline

& cigarettes. Maybe the day will close without
                        the page turning as he wraps his arms around

the boy's milk-blue shoulders. The boy pretending
                        to be asleep as his father's clutch tightens.

The way the barrel, aimed at the sky, must tighten
                        around the bullet

to make it speak