precious little ingénue !

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

You are going to break your promise. I understand.

You’re lonely too.

It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be.

I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable.

I am your servant.

I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased.

For you alone I will be weak.

I belong here, and you will not deny me.

I say these things, and the world listens.

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried.

In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories.

I moved the earth and the water for you.

You will always run away with her.

You will always lose her.

You will always be a fool.

You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear.

You have already done all of this and will do it again.

No one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.

We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying.

What we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.

There need never be any rules between us.

Let us be greedy together; let us hoard.

Do not leave me, swear that you will never leave me.

I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.

Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.

I can’t abide a poor liar.

You look like a winter’s night. I could sleep inside the cold of you.

Oh, quit that. Blushing is for virgins and Christians.

Scold me; deny me. Tell me you want what you want and damn me forever. But don’t leave me.

Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.

In his own country, Death can be kind.

What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?

Men die. It’s practically what they’re for.

I am no one; I am nothing.

Nothing in me was not made by you.

A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief.

Just tell yourself a story that’ll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

Forever isn’t bright; it isn’t like that. Forever is cold and hard and final.

I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.

If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.

What did I do wrong? Was I boring? Did I ignore you?

Don’t you dare speak to me like that.

I have worn nothing but blood and death for years.

I have fought all your battles for you, just as you asked me.

I have learned not to cry when I strangle a man.

I have learned to watch everything die.

I am not a little girl anymore, dazzled by your magic. It is my magic, now, too.

Are we not devils?

No one is now what they were before the war.

I have not seen you without your skin on.

Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.

We obsess. It’s in our nature.

I’ve a devil of a habit for being right.

In war you must always choose sides.

If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.

We are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive.

My old bones will follow yours soon enough.

It is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair.

I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.

After love, no one is what they were before.

I have survived, but I have not been spared.

In the space of one heartbeat to another I loved you and I was lost to you.

Frighten me, make me cry, only come back.

It’s not so bad, my darling. Being dead. It’s like being alive, only colder.

You’ll think it’s love, while he dines on your heart.

You will be so beautiful when you are old.

I cannot keep you and I cannot let you go.

You will live as you live in any world…with difficulty, and grief.

I look at you and it is like my throat being cut.

She said you’d come and I swore to eat your heart.

I still want to kiss you.

My heart is being cut in two. I cannot bear it.

What happens to anything beautiful?

all text taken from the poetry book night sky with exit wounds by ocean vuong.

‘  in the body, where everything has a price, i was a beggar.  ‘

‘  he was singing, which is why i remember it. his voice — it filled me to the core like a skeleton.  ‘

‘  even my name knelt down inside me, asking to be spared.  ‘

‘  it is all i remember.  ‘

‘  i was alive. i didn’t know there was a better reason.  ‘

‘  i lost it all with my eyes wide open.  ‘

‘  do you know who i am?  ‘

‘  how easily a boy in a dress the red of shut eyes vanishes beneath the sound of his own galloping.  ‘

‘  i’m dreaming of a curtain of snow falling from her shoulders.  ‘

‘  snow scraping against the window. snow shredded with gunfire. red sky.  ‘

‘  show me how ruin makes a home out of hip bones.  ‘

‘  let every river envy our mouths. let every kiss hit the body like a season.  ‘

‘  if you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.  ‘

‘  if we make it to shore, i will name our son after this water. i will learn to love a monster.  ‘

‘  he laughs despite knowing he has ruined every beautiful thing just to prove beauty cannot change him.  ‘

‘  hey! you didn’t have to go this far. why did you go so far?  ‘

‘  sometimes i feel like an ampersand.  ‘

‘  everyone can forget us — as long as you remember.  ‘

‘  i hold the gun & wonder if an entry wound in the night would make a hole as wide as morning.  ‘

‘  there’s a lighthouse. 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.  ‘

‘  even tomorrow you will have today.  ‘

‘  you’ll never forget yourself the way god forgets his hands.  ‘

‘  the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting.  ‘

‘  my mother said i could be anything i wanted — but i chose to live.  ‘

‘  i am ready to be every animal you leave behind.  ‘

‘  and this is how we loved: a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers though my hair — my hair a wildfire.  ‘

‘  when our lips touched the day closed into a coffin.  ‘

‘  the year is a distance we’ve traveled in circles.  ‘

‘  we made it, baby. we’re riding in the back of the black limousine.  ‘

‘  i love my country. i pretend nothing is wrong.  ‘

‘  i’m holding your still-hot thoughts in, darling, my sweet, sweet ___.  ‘

‘  you want to tell him it’s okay that the night is also a grave we climb out of.  ‘

‘  you say thank you thank you thank you because you haven’t learned the purpose of forgive me.  ‘

‘  you’re so quiet you’re almost tomorrow.  ‘

‘  to love another man — is to leave no one behind to forgive me. i want to leave no one behind.  ‘

‘  even though he’s gone, i still want to be clean.  ‘

‘  if only the rain were gasoline, your tongue a lit match, & you can change without disappearing.  ‘

‘  he dies each night you close your eyes & hear his slow exhale.  ‘

‘  wait, i have something to say.  ‘

‘  as if my finger, tracing your collarbone behind closed doors, was enough to erase myself.  ‘

‘  to forget we built this house knowing it won’t last.  ‘

‘  it’s funny. i always knew i’d be warmest beside by man.  ‘

‘  don’t laugh. just tell me the story again.  ‘

‘  speak — until your voice is nothing but the crackle of charred bones.  ‘

‘  look how happy we are to be no one & still american.  ‘

‘  i’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven/  ‘

‘  say you’d kill for it.  ‘

‘  don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here?  ‘

‘  silly me. i thought love was real and the body imaginary.  ‘

‘  i said yes because you asked me to stay.  ‘

‘  there is so much i want to tell you. how my greatest accolade was to walk across the brooklyn bridge & not think of flight.  ‘

‘  you will always remember what you were doing when it hurts the most.  ‘

‘  dearest father, forgive me for i have seen.  ‘

‘  once, i fell in love during a slow-motion car crash.  ‘

‘  i wrote a better hour onto the page & watched the fire take it back.  ‘

‘  this means you are not alone.  ‘

‘  don’t stay here. don’t cry anymore.  ‘

‘  i promise to stop soon.  ‘

‘  how come depression makes me feel more alive?  ‘

‘  i shouldn’t have, but he had the hands of someone i used to know. someone i was used to.  ‘

‘  i dreamed i walked barefoot all the way to your house in the snow. everything was the blue of smudged ink and you were still alive.  ‘

‘  here. that’s all i wanted to be.  ‘

‘  don’t worry. your father is only your father until one of you forgets.  ‘

‘  the end of the road is so far ahead it is already behind us.  ‘

‘  don’t be afraid, the gunfire is only the sound of people trying to live a little longer & failing.  ‘

‘  remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.  ‘

‘  the difference between prayer & mercy is how you move the tongue.  ‘

❛ some people are so good at disappearing that you start to doubt your memories that they were ever there. ❜ 

❛ how do you say goodbye to someone who was never there? ❜

❛ i don’t want a world without pain, or loss. i just want them to mean something. ❜

❛ there are some people who believe a photo captures their soul. ❜

❛ if you love something let it go. ❜

❛ you were not the first, you will not be the last. ❜

❛ there are some secrets i will take to my grave, but i don’t want loving you to be one of them. ❜

❛ you can still back out before anyone gets hurt. ❜

❛ i said i’d love you forever, and really meant it at the time. i guess that’s my problem. ❜

❛ kindness won’t save anyone. ❜

❛ for a long time i thought i deserved better. but the truth is we both deserve better than this. ❜

❛ i wish there was a word that meant “goodbye” for someone who was already gone. ❜

❛ i never meant to hurt you. you have to believe me. ❜

❛ we’ll always have yesterday. ❜

❛ hope softens the rough edge of every promise. ❜

❛ love is stupid. happiness is admitting we aren’t better than stupid. ❜

❛ you can’t always want what you get. ❜

❛ i wish i had a dollar for every dollar’s worth of work i did. ❜

❛ we are empty inside and hollow. hoping something sweet will make its nest in us. ❜

❛ we’re too far from help. ❜

❛ monsters are even more scary when you see them afraid. ❜

❛ we carry our own loneliness with us. ❜ 

❛ fake happiness beats genuine misery. ❜

❛ they always trust me to be someone who i don’t even want to be. ❜

❛ i cannot see where i want to go, only that i want the going.❜

❛ you are never here. you are always almost there. ❜