Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

Where apples thunder the earth with red hooves.

When we left it, the city was still smoldering. Otherwise it was a perfect spring morning.

Stars. Or rather, the drains of heaven—waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just long enough for us to slip through.

And here’s the kicker: there’s a cork where the sunset should be. It was always there. There’s a ship made from toothpicks and superglue. There’s a ship in a wine bottle on the mantel in the middle of a Christmas party—eggnog spilling from red Solo cups. But we keep sailing anyway. We keep standing at the bow. A wedding-cake couple encased in glass. The water so still now. The water like air, like hours. Everyone’s shouting or singing and he can’t tell whether the song is for him—or the burning rooms he mistook for childhood. Everyone’s dancing while a tiny man and woman are stuck inside a green bottle thinking someone is waiting at the end of their lives to say Hey! You didn’t have to go this far. Why did you go so far? Just as a baseball bat crashes through the world.

That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet. Water whittled down to intention. Intention into nourishment. Everyone can forget us—as long as you remember.

Summer in the mind. God opens his other eye: two moons in the lake.

here, sunk in folds of yellowed news -paper, lies the Colt .45—silent & heavy as an amputated hand.

Don’t you know? There are men who touch breasts as they would the tops of skulls. Men who carry dreams over mountains, the dead on their backs. But only a mother can walk

with the weight of a second beating heart. Stupid boy.

Always another hour to kill—only to beg

some god to give it back.

Because the year is a distance we’ve traveled in circles.

It’s more like the sound a doe makes when the arrowhead replaces the day with an answer to the rib’s hollowed hum. We saw it coming but kept walking through the hole in the garden. Because the leaves were pure green & the fire only a pink brushstroke in the distance. It’s not about the light—but how dark it makes you depending on where you stand. Depending on where you stand your name can sound like a full moon shredded in a dead doe’s pelt.

They say the sky is blue but I know it’s black seen through too much distance. You will always remember what you were doing when it hurts the most.

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

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