On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

by Ocean Vuong

Some people say history moves in a spiral, not the line we have come to expect. We travel through time in a circular trajectory, our distance increasing from an epicenter only to return again, one circle removed.

I’m broken in two, the message said. In two, it was the only thought I could keep, sitting in my seat, how losing a person could make more of us, the living, make us two.

I miss you more than I remember you.

If you find yourself trapped inside a dimming world, remember it was always this dark inside the body. Where the heart, like any law, stops only for the living.

To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.