“As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself.” — Ocean Vuong Behind closed doors Copy Share Image
“The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed.” — Ocean Vuong Beautiful Copy Share Image
“I hold the gun & wonder if an entry wound in the night would make a hole wide as morning” — Ocean Vuong Copy Share Image
“Green waves surround this black rock where I sit turning bones to sonatas. Fingers blurred, I play what I know from listening… — Ocean Vuong Copy Share Image
“I watched, through the keyhole, not the man showering, but the rain falling through him: guitar strings snapping over his globed shoulders” — Ocean Vuong Rain Copy Share Image
“In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life… — Ocean Vuong Gaze Copy Share Image
“It is no accident, Ma, that the comma resembles a fetus— that curve of continuation. We were all once inside our mothers,… — Ocean Vuong Birth Copy Share Image
“God must be a season, grandma said, looking out at the blizzard drowning her garden. My footsteps on the sidewalk were the… — Ocean Vuong Dear god Copy Share Image
“Your father is only your father until one of you forgets. Like how the spine won't remember its wings no matter how… — Ocean Vuong Parenting Copy Share Image
“Brooklyn’s too cold tonight & all my friends are three years away. My mother said I could be anything I wanted—but I… — Ocean Vuong Three years Copy Share Image
“I met a man tonight… maybe I shouldn't have, but he had the hands of someone I used to know. Someone I… — Ocean Vuong Tonight Copy Share Image
“Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because… — Ocean Vuong Apologizing Copy Share Image
“Woke up screaming with no sound. The room filling with a bluish water called dawn. Went to kiss grandma on the forehead… — Ocean Vuong Dawn Copy Share Image
“Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot… — Ocean Vuong Hunger Copy Share Image
“If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once. That a woman on a sinking ship… — Ocean Vuong Life Copy Share Image
“I am writing you from inside a body that used to be yours. Which is to say, I am writing as a… — Ocean Vuong Mother Copy Share Image
“Some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea / what this means is that I don't know / desire… — Ocean Vuong Desire Copy Share Image
“use it to prove how the stars were always what we knew they were: the exit wounds of every misfired word” — Ocean Vuong Astronomy Copy Share Image
“When they ask you where you're from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman. That you… — Ocean Vuong Blade Copy Share Image
“Some people say history moves in a spiral, not the line we have come to expect. We travel through time in a… — Ocean Vuong Existentialism Copy Share Image
“How insufficient the memory, to fail before death. how will hear these notes when the train slides into the yard, the lights… — Ocean Vuong Death Copy Share Image
“He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing another hour. His hand. His hands. The syllables inside them. O father, O foreshadow, press… — Ocean Vuong Mother Copy Share Image
“And this is how we danced: with our mothers’ white dresses spilling from our feet, late August turning our hands dark red.… — Ocean Vuong Burning Copy Share Image
