The Chosen and the Beautiful

by Nghi Vo

I wanted, as my aunt might have said, to examine the lion’s teeth, and of course the best way to do that was to stick my head in the lion’s mouth.

“Thank you.” I took a delicate sip. “I was hoping that someone would bring me something.” “I’ll bring you anything you want,” he said, and I tilted my head at him. “You ought not say such things to me,” I said gravely. “I might ask you for the moon, and what would you do then?” “Get it for you, of course.”

He can’t forgive people for their origins, and at the same time, he won’t forgive people for trying to overcome them.”

I knew that there was something empty in him before, but now I could see that it wasn’t empty all the time. Now there was a monstrous want there, remorseless and relentless, and it made my stomach turn that it thought itself love.

“When you can’t fix a thing, the best course of action can be to ruin it all so that no can see what truly happened.”

Nick laughed, and I wondered if that was what love was, making someone forget the pain that gnawed at them and would not stop.

What does it look like when a thousand-year hunger gets a taste of what it’s craved?

When you’re alone so much, realizing that you’re not is terribly upsetting.

He said those words with a kind of set-in-stone belief. It was true, or he would make it true by believing in it hard enough.

I could almost hear the chorus, his only sin was loving her too much, and at the same time, I could hear the rejoinder in my own voice: his sin was in only loving her and nothing else.