#writings

“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.

“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.

I wrote you letters about how much I loved you, just like you wanted and dreamed of. I gave you the letters and you told me, “This reminds me of her.” No thank yous, or “I love you too”s. But I saw your sad eyes, and I thought - this is okay. You smiled at me with the tide pulling away in your eyes and I knew one day the tide would come again. I told you I love you before we went to sleep, and you’d mumble, “I hate the word love,” so I never said it again. Yet I hope you knew it in my smile, how my eye lit when I saw you, how my heart beated fast when you held me close. I’d call you lovely and you’d scoff at my attempts to compliment your personality. “She’d say lovely all the time,” you explained. I thought you just didn’t want me to be a repeat of the one of went wrong. So I changed my vocabulary to soothe your heartache. I wore tank tops in the summer when the humidity was thick enough to swim in, but you didn’t like me so revealing. So I wore sweaters and jeans, just to hear your praise. Yet at the end of the day, you always wanted me revealing again, but just for yourself. You wanted new friends, so I set you free. You found new ones, and so did I. But jealousy ran too fast through your veins and the sound of his name made you cling by letting go. My heart never faltered, but my mind doubted who you were. You believed I loved another, though you never asked. So you’d come to me at the end of the day, pointing out and complementing other girls. That her sweater was so cute, and her modesty so appealing. But at the end of the day, you still didn’t like I love you’s and yet you still wanted me just for yourself; but yourself for everyone else. You didn’t believe my dedication to wait for your tide to come back to the shore, but I waited on the beach for you to pull me back out to sea. So I tried I love yous, even though you hated them so much. I thought maybe you couldn’t see the spark in my eyes, maybe the didn’t shine as bright through the sadness that cloaked them. I thought clear words would make you understand, I wanted you even if I had to wait or drown in your sea. You told me to wait and I did. But that last day, I couldn’t wait anymore. I kissed your cheek a thousand times, never settling my stomach enough to kiss your lips that spoke nice words. I couldn’t wait anymore, for you or for anyone. You looked at me with strange eyes, wondering the reason behind my actions. Somehow through it all, you didn’t listen anymore when I slide secrets in our conversations. If my breaths were limited, kissing you was to be one of the last. But as I grasped the bottle, the puzzle fit in your mind and the tides came back to shore. I was drowning out at sea, and you brought the salt water out of my lungs. Suddenly love was a part of your vocabulary, and my stomach still felt mushy even though the ocean water was no longer in it. You covered me in sugar, I was stickily sweet. Too much sweets made a tooth and tummy ache; You didn’t like my clothes, or my views on life. My views too liberal and you so conserved. I breathed air because of your words, but your words were what I breathed. Every breath too harsh, not oxygen, but filled with some carcinogens. Every breath closer to the death you saved me from. Maybe you were just a slower form of suicide. Maybe you were the harder way out. Maybe love would be the death of me.

I do not own my own
polaroid camera to capture
memories of my teens
but I remember my pre school
teacher taking photos
and giving us them to
shake and we danced like
no one was watching
because we didn’t care
what each other thought.

There are moments when  you feel it in your bones. A feeling so deep, your skin has goosebumps, shivers go down your spine, and you know. You just know - you know this is raw emotion, in the flow of notes and pitches. Beauty shown truly through probably just theirtone. Their voice has such depth, for something you can’t see and you’re just wondering - how is this even possible? How can a human being produce such a sound with their vocal chords that it could bring you to tears? Maybe that’s not true music, but that’s music. That’s music that you feel in your bones, from the hairs on your head to your toes. 

@/christophermcgeownwriting on instagram

“When I was a little girl, I thought that love had to be delicate and fragile, similar to a flower. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that love can be different. It can be like a firework, explosive and bright. It can be raw, passionate, wild. Maybe even dangerous or reckless, but you shouldn’t be scared to fall in love. You are made of flesh and bone and muscle, and you are strong enough to handle any type of it.”

“If I’ve learned anything from life, it’s that sometimes, the darkest times can bring us to the brightest places. I’ve learned that the most toxic people can teach us the most important lessons; that our most painful struggles can grant us the most necessary growth; and that the most heartbreaking losses of friendship and love can make room for the most wonderful people. I’ve learned that what seems like the end of the road is actually just the discovery that we are meant to travel down a different path. I’ve learned that no matter how difficult things seem, there is always hope. And I’ve learned that no matter how powerless we feel or how horrible things seem, we can’t give up. We have to keep going. Even when it’s scary, even when all of our strengths seems gone, we have to keep picking ourselves back up and moving forward, because whatever we’re battling in the moment, it will pass, and we will make it through. We’ve made it this far. We can make it through whatever comes next.”

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘Dark Night’.“

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘To The Dead’.“

“It is much safer to be feared than loved because love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli, from “The Prince", originally published c. 1532.

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘Guilty of Dust’.”

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘Guilty of Dust’"

— Frank Bidart, from “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘Guilty of Dust’.”