I haven’t killed a thing since 2006
The darkness out there, wet as a newborn
I dog-eared the book & immediately thought of masturbation
How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part
What we’ll always have is something we lost
In the snow, the dry outline of my mother
Promise me you won’t vanish again, I said
She lay there awhile, thinking it over
One by one the houses turned off their lights
I lay down over her outline, to keep her true
Together we made an angel
We looked like something being destroyed in a blizzard
I haven’t killed a thing since
contributor
contributor
Ocean Vuong is the author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019). He was a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.
