Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

Prayer for the Newly Damned Dearest Father, forgive me for I have seen. Behind the wooden fence, a field lit with summer, a man pressing a shank to another man’s throat. Steel turning to light on sweat-slick neck. Forgive me for not twisting this tongue into the shape of Your name. For thinking: this must be how every prayer begins—the word Please cleaving the wind into fragments, into what a boy hears in his need to know how pain blesses the body back to its sinner. The hour suddenly stilled. The man, his lips pressed to the black boot. Am I wrong to love those eyes, to see something so clear & blue—beg to remain clear & blue? Did my cheek twitch when the wet shadow bloomed from his crotch & trickled into ochre dirt? How quickly the blade becomes You. But let me begin again: There’s a boy kneeling in a house with every door kicked open to summer. There’s a question corroding his tongue. A knife touching Your finger lodged inside the throat. Dearest Father, what becomes of the boy no longer a boy? Please— what becomes of the shepherd when the sheep are cannibals?