Lesser Than a Lester

“There are times, late at night, when your son would wake believing a bullet is lodged inside him. He’d feel it floating on the right side of his chest, just between the ribs. The bullet was always here, the boy thinks, older even than himself—and his bones, tendons, and veins had merely wrapped around the metal shard, sealing it inside him. It wasn’t me, the boy thinks, who was inside my mother’s womb, but this bullet, this seed I bloomed around. Even now, as the cold creeps in around him, he feels it poking out from his chest, slightly tenting his sweater. He feels for the protrusion but, as usual, finds nothing. It’s receded, he thinks. It wants to stay inside me. It is nothing without me. Because a bullet without a body is a song without ears.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Maybe in the next life we’ll meet each other for the first time - believing in everything but the harm we’re capable of. Maybe we’ll be the opposite of buffaloes. We’ll grow wings and spill over the cliff as a generation of monarchs, heading home. Green Apple.

Like snow covering the particulars of the city, they will say we never happened, that our survival was a myth. But they’re wrong, You and I, we were real. We laughed knowing joy would tear the stitches from our lips.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Because nothing could be taken from me, I thought, if I had already given it away.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Texas law, while prohibiting the murder of human beings, defined a human only as White, African American, or Mexican. The nameless yellow body was not considered human because it did not fit in a slot on a piece of paper.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous