Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

some call this being human but you already know it’s the briefest form of forever

Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.

Shouldn’t heaven be superheavy by now?

Note to self: If Orpheus were a woman I wouldn’t be stuck down here.

Why do all my books leave me empty-handed?

Either way, I forgot his name by heart.

God must be a season, grandma said, looking out at the blizzard drowning her garden.

Here. That’s all I wanted to be. I promise.

Never her face. Because in my hurry to make her real, make her here, I will forget to write a bit of light into the room.

& how could I have known, that by pressing this pen to paper, I was touching us back from extinction?

I enter my life the way words entered me— by falling through the silence of this wide open mouth

Your father is only your father until one of you forgets.

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

Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not a lifeboat.

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.

Because the difference between prayer & mercy is how you move the tongue.

I never asked for flight. Only to feel this fully, this entire, the way snow touches bare skin—& is, suddenly, snow no longer.