Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

Stranger, palpable echo, here is my hand, filled with blood thin as a widow’s tears. I am ready. I am ready to be every animal you leave behind.

To keep & be kept. The way a field turns its secrets into peonies. The way light keeps its shadow by swallowing it.

He dies at the party where everyone laughs & all you want is to go into the kitchen & make seven omelets before burning down the house. All you want is to run into the woods & beg the wolf to fuck you up.

tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, / their blazed wings. / How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing

They say the sky is blue but I know it’s black seen through too much distance.

Green waves surround this black rock where I sit turning bones to sonatas.

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

pin this antlered heartbeat back to earth

so bright so empty the bullets pass right through you thinking they have found the sky

press a hand to this blood -warm body like a word being nailed to its meaning

Spilled orange juice all over the table this morning. Sudden sunlight I couldn’t wipe away.

Dear god, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through to get here.

I know nothing of my country. I write things down. I build a life & tear it apart & the sun keeps shining.

The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed. & remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.

Fresh snow crackling on the window, each flake a letter from an alphabet I’ve shut out for good.