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41 " He dies at the party where everyone laughs & all you want is to go into the kitchen & make seven omelets before burning down the house. "
― Ocean Vuong , Night Sky with Exit Wounds
42 " To love another man is to leave no one behind to forgive me. "
43 " The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed. & remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world. "
44 " I watched, through the keyhole, not the man showering, but the rain falling through him: guitar strings snapping over his globed shoulders "
45 " Some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea / what this means is that I don't know / desire other than the need / to be shattered & rebuilt / the mind forgetting / the body's crime of living "
46 " Because the year is a distance we've traveled in circles "
47 " A pillaged village is a fine example of a perfect rhyme. He said that.He was white. Or maybe, I was just beside myself, next to him.Either way, I forgot his name by heart. "
48 " Note to self: If Orpheus were a woman I wouldn't be stuck down here. "
49 " Use it to prove how the stars were always what we knew they were: the exit wounds of every misfired word. "
50 " You're so quiet you're almost tomorrow. "
51 " If you must know, the best way to understand a man is with your teeth. "
52 " Sometimes I feel like an ampersand. I wake up waiting for the crush. Maybe the body is the only question an answer can’t extinguish. How many kisses have we crushed to our lips in prayer—only to pick up the pieces? "
53 " I hold the gun & wonder if an entry wound in the night would make a hole wide as morning. That if I looked through it, I would see the end of this sentence. "
54 " Woke up screaming with no sound. The room filling with a bluish water called dawn. Went to kiss grandma on the forehead just in case. "
55 " I enter my life the way words entered me— by falling through the silence of this wide open mouth "
56 " Maybe we pray on our knees because god only listens when we're this close to the devil. "
57 " How many kisses have we crushed to our lips in prayer—only to pick up the pieces? "
58 " It's more like the sounda doe makes when the arrowheadreplaces the daywith an answerto the rib's hollowedhum. "
59 " But only a mother can walk with the weight of a second beating heart. "
60 " I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after backhanding mother, then taking a chain saw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls. & so I learned—that a man in climax was the closest thingto surrender. "