On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

by Ocean Vuong

Outside, the hummingbird’s whirring sounds almost like human breath. Its beak jabs into the pool of sugared water at the feeder’s base. What a terrible life, I think now, to have to move so fast just to stay in one place.

Sorry, for these men, was a passport to remain.

Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.

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.

The truth is one nation, under drugs, under drones.