Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

How a horse will run until it breaks into weather—into wind. How like the wind, they will see him. They will see him clearest when the city burns.

Let every river envy our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body like a season. Where apples thunder the earth with red hooves. & I am your son.

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

That a woman on a sinking ship becomes a life raft—no matter how soft her skin.

He said the shadow of missiles growing larger on the sidewalk looked like god playing an air piano above us.

But only a mother can walk with the weight of a second beating heart. Stupid boy. You can get lost in every book but you’ll never forget yourself the way god forgets his hands. 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.

Brooklyn’s too cold tonight & all my friends are three years away. My mother said I could be anything I wanted—but I chose to live.

I just don’t know how to love a man gently. Tenderness a thing to be beaten into.

How it never fails to fail so accurately. But what if I broke through the skin’s thin page anyway & found the heart not the size of a fist but your mouth opening to the width of Jerusalem. What then? To love another man—is to leave no one behind to forgive me.

Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once.

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

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