Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

I didn’t know the cost of entering a song—was to lose your way back.

How like the wind, they will see him. They will see him clearest when the city burns.

The wind is highlighted by fire as the American troops leaving highlighted by the devastation theyg left

Stars. Or rather, the drains of heaven—waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just long enough for us to slip through.

Exit wounds

his breath a misplaced weather.

A mother’s love neglects pride the way fire neglects the cries of what it burns.

only a mother can walk with the weight of a second beating heart.

For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep.

Maybe we pray on our knees because god only listens when we’re this close to the devil.

Forgive me for not twisting this tongue into the shape of Your name.

Yes, you have a country. Someday, they will find it while searching for lost ships...

Your experience is not yet widely known

Use it to prove how the stars were always what we knew they were: the exit wounds of every misfired word.

There’s enough light to drown in but never enough to enter the bones

The most beautiful part of your body is wherever your mother’s shadow falls.

Don’t be afraid, the gunfire is only the sound of people trying to live a little longer & failing.

loneliness is still time spent with the world.

Your dead friends passing through you like wind through a wind chime.

here’s a room so warm & blood-close, I swear, you will wake— & mistake these walls for skin.

& so what—if my feathers are burning. I never asked for flight.