“I reread Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary yesterday, the book he wrote each day for a year after his mother’s death. I have known the body of my mother, he writes, sick and then dying. And that’s where I stopped. Where I decided to write to you. You who are still alive.”

“I reread Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary yesterday, the book he wrote each day for a year after his mother’s death. I have known the body of my mother, he writes, sick and then dying. And that’s where I stopped. Where I decided to write to you. You who are still alive.”

— Ocean Vuong