Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

I kneel beside him to see how far I might sink. Do you know who I am, Ba? But the answer never comes.

South Vietnam, April 29, 1975: Armed Forces Radio played Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” as a code to begin Operation Frequent Wind,

Milkflower petals in the street like pieces of a girl’s dress. May your days be merry and bright ... He fills a teacup with champagne, brings it to her lips. Open, he says. She opens.

A white ... A white ... I’m dreaming of a curtain of snow falling from her shoulders. Snow scraping against the window. Snow shredded with gunfire. Red sky. Snow on the tanks rolling over the city walls.

Show me how ruin makes a home out of hip bones.

O mother, O minute hand, teach me how to hold a man the way thirst holds water.

If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.

He laughs despite knowing he has ruined every beautiful thing just to prove beauty cannot change him.

If you must know, the best way to understand a man is with your teeth.

When they ask you where you’re from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman. That you were not born but crawled, headfirst— into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting.

I am running toward a rusted horizon, running out of a country to run out of.

I am chasing my father the way the dead chase after days—& although I am still too far to hear it, I can tell, by the way his neck tilts to one side, as if broken, that he is singing my favorite song to his empty hands.

Even now the nail salon will not leave her: isopropyl acetate, ethyl acetate, chloride, sodium lauryl sulfate & sweat fuming through her pink I NY t-shirt.

My mother said I could be anything I wanted—but I chose to live.

Understand me / when I say I burn best / when crowned / with your scent:

I learned—that a man in climax was the closest thing to surrender.

Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here?

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

Please— what becomes of the shepherd when the sheep are cannibals?

Note to self: If a guy tells you his favorite poet is Jack Kerouac, there’s a very good chance he’s a douchebag.

Dear god, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through to get here. Here. That’s all I wanted to be. I promise.