Dear Sara

OCEAN VUONG

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 the margins an older desert where black bones once buried are now words where I’m waving to you they survived the blast by becoming shrapnel embedded in the 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 sober but my hands are creatures who believe in sorcery 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—like your aunt Rose gone