#on earth were briefly gorgeous

belle-keys:

gorgeous

metamorphesque:

“Who will be lost in the story we tell ourselves? Who will be lost in ourselves? A story, after all, is a kind of swallowing. To open a mouth, in speech, is to leave only the bones, which remain untold.”

— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”

metamorphesque:

― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?

– Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

—Ocean Vuong,fromOn Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (vialunamonchtuna)

“I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you’re born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly.”

“Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me? I miss you more than I remember you.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“I wanted to leave, to say stop. But the price of confessing, I learned, was that you get an answer.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“Why did I feel more myself while reaching for him, my hand midair, than I did having touched him?”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you’d know it’s a flood.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“But your son is still under the trees beside the boy you will never meet.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“I look him dead in the eyes and do what you do. I refuse to die.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“Who will be lost in the story we tell ourselves? Who will be lost in ourselves? A story, after all, is a kind of swallowing. To open a mouth, in speech, is to leave only the bones, which remain untold.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.”

— Ocean Vuong,from“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“I am handsome at exactly three angles and deadly from everywhere else. I am writing you from inside a body that used to be yours. Which is to say, I am writing as a son.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

““Hey,” he said, half-asleep, “what were you before you met me?” “I think I was drowning.” A pause. “And what are you now?” he whispered, sinking. I thought for a second. “Water.””

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“Our hands empty except for our hands.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“My mouth a blaze of touch…”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“To bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess what I mean is that sometimes I don’t know what or who we are. Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was. Can you hear me yet? Can you read me?”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.

“… the words moving underneath the shadows we made”

— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, published c. 2019.