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81 " His voice - it filled me to the corelike a skeleton. Even my nameknelt down inside me, askingto be spared. "
― Ocean Vuong , Night Sky with Exit Wounds
82 " For in the body, where everything has a price,I was alive. I didn't know there was a better reason. "
83 " Young enough to believe nothing. "
84 " We had been sailing – but the edge of the world was nowhere in sight. "
85 " some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea "
86 " You can get lost in every bookbut you'll never forget yourself. "
87 " A mother's love neglects pride the way fire neglects the cries of what it burns. "
88 " Like how the spine won't remember its wings no matter how many times our knees kiss the pavement. "
89 " I didn’t know the cost of entering a song—was to lose your way back. So I entered. So I lost. I lost it all with my eyes wide open. "
90 " Show me how ruin makes a home out of hip bones. "
91 " You will always remember what you were doing when it hurts the most. There is so much I need to tell you- but I only earned one life. & I took nothing. Nothing. "
92 " Let every river envy our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body like a season. "
93 " Your father is only your father until one of you forgets "
94 " I met a man tonight. A high school English teacher from the next town. A small town. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but he had the hands of someone I used to know. Someone I was used to. The way they formed brief churches over the table as he search for the right words. I met a man, not you. In his room the Bibles shook on the shelf from candlelight. His scrotum a bruised fruit. I kissed it lightly, the way one might kiss a grenade before hurling it into the night’s mouth. Maybe the tongue is also a key. "
95 " The way the barrel, aimed at the sky, must tighten around a bullet to make it speak "
96 " Note to self: If Orpheus were a woman I wouldn’t be stuck down here. "
97 " I met a man tonight. A high school English teacher from the next town. A small town. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but he had the hands of someone I used to know. Someone I was used to. The way they formed brief churches over the table as he searched for the right words. I met a man, not you. In his room the Bibles shook on the shelf from candlelight. His scrotum a bruised fruit. I kissed it lightly, the way one might kiss a grenade before hurling it into the night’s mouth. Maybe the tongue is also a key. "
98 " That to say your name is to hear the sound of clocks being turned back another hour & morning finds our clothes on your mother’s front porch, shed like week-old lilies. "
99 " Back from the wind, he called to me with a mouthful of crickets— smoke & jasmine rising from his hair. I waited for the night to wane into decades—before reaching for his hands. "
100 " I kneel beside him to see how farI might sink. *Do you know who I am,**Ba?* But the answer never comes. "