Anthony Michael Ryder

“I read that beauty has historically demanded replication. We make more of anything we find aesthetically pleasing, whether it's a vase, a painting, a chalice, a poem. We reproduce it in order to keep it, extend it through space and time. To gaze at what pleases -- a fresco, a peach-red mountain range, a boy, the mole on his jaw, -- is, in itself, replication -- the image prolonged in the eye, making more of it, making it last. Staring into the mirror, I replicate myself into a future where I might not exist.

...Because his offering extended me into something worthy of generosity, and therefore seen. It was that very moreness that I wanted to prolong, to return to.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous