just call it horizon

I'm posting two poems today: one for today (April 26), and one for one of the days I missed earlier in the month (this past Sunday, the 24th). My original plan was to post one poem this morning and one this evening, but obviously that didn't happen, so I'm going to post this one and then the other one. They're both really wonderful poems—the kind where I wonder how I haven't already posted them. I may sneak in one more extra poem this week, since I also missed April 17, and any excuse to post another poem, am I right? I have also somehow managed to save a lot of my heavy hitters for the end of the month, so...sorry not sorry about that, too.

        After Frank O’Hara / After Roger Reeves

Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don't worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won't remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother's shadow falls.
Here's the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don't worry. Just call it horizon
& you'll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it's not
a lifeboat. Here's the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don't be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here's
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here's a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here's a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.

—Ocean Vuong, "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong," from Night Sky With Exit Wounds (2016), but originally published in The New Yorker, April 27, 2015.