On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong
“All freedom is relative -you know too well- and sometimes it’s no freedom at all, but simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with a distance, but still there, as when they ‘free’ wild animals into nature preserves only to contain them yet again by larger borders. But I took it anyway, that widening. Because sometimes not seeing the bars is enough.”
It wants to stay inside me. It is nothing without me. Because a bullet without a body is song without ears.
“They say addiction might be linked to bipolar disorder. It’s the chemicals in our brains, they say. I got the wrong chemicals, Ma. Or rather I don’t get enough of one or the other. they have a pill for it. They have an industry. They make millions. Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness. I want to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and say ‘It’s been an honor to serve my country.’”
“They say nothing lasts forever and I’m writing you in the voice of an endangered species.
The truth is I’m worried they will get us before they get us.”
“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.”
“What is a country but a life sentence?”