Sondes Achour

“I barely knew I had skin before I met you.”
― Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests

“I'm a perfectly equipped failure.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers

“How insufficient the memory, to fail before death.
how will hear these notes when the train slides
into the yard, the lights turned out, and the song

lingers with breaths rising from empty seats?
I know I am too human to praise what is fading.
But for now, I just want to listen as the train fills

completely with warm water, and we are all
swimming slowly toward the man with Mozart
flowing from his hands. I want nothing

but to put my fingers inside his mouth,
let that prayer hum through my veins.
I want crawl into the hole in his violin.

I want to sleep there
until my flesh
becomes music.”
― Ocean Vuong