Empress Indignant

Inspired by true events

Coop

I left the kind of wedding that made you want to get married. Oaks, live witnesses to promises you were sure they'd keep. Car ride home...

Did you think I forgot you? Velvet hands and lifts in your shoes. Took the invitation to your house upstate where I worried we'd split...

In my dream you showed up out of nowhere, pomegranate in December. You were sweet and ready, like you weren’t before. The last time I saw...

She calls me lady as she takes my order as if I was someone to be respected. I am not, neither are the men with their red faces and...

She must have always romanticized being a divorcee: a former love-believer turned cynic, rebel of familial norms, brandishing her scarlet...

She said I do not want to tell her to come back inside, her small heart already black and blue because dad had better things to do. She...

1993

Just tell the story again, of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, their blazed wings.

-Ocean Vuong

Los Angeles, CA