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Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.
The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past.
What is a country but a life sentence?
When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?
To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.
Perhaps to lay hands on your child is to prepare him for war. To say possessing a heartbeat is never as simple as the heart’s task of saying yes yes yes to the body.
To love something, then, is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched—and alive. A name, thin as air, can also be a shield. A Little Dog shield.
They say nothing lasts forever but they’re just scared it will last longer than they can love it.
You and I, we were Americans until we opened our eyes.
In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?
A page, turning, is a wing lifted with no twin, and therefore no flight. And yet we are moved.
To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.
