Aydin’s Reviews > On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous > Status Update

you, who crawled from the wreck of summer like sons from their mothers’ bodies

“sometimes, when i am careless, i believe the wound is also the place where the skin reencounters itself, asking of each end, ‘where have you been?’”

“Your hands are hideous, and I hate everything that made them that way. They are the wreck and reckoning of a dream.”

“You’re a mother, Ma. You’re also a monster. But so am I. Which is why I can’t turn away from you. Which is why I have taken God’s loneliest creation and put you inside it. Look.”

screeeeeeaaaaaaaaam

“‘You’re not a monster,’ I said. But I lied. What really wanted to say is that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be.”

aaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!

I had dragged my feet listening to this because Ocean Vuong reads it in that voice poets so often use when reading their own writing. But I got over it and am about 20 min in. It is so, so beautiful, and love is so complicated!!!! I did forget it was fiction and not autobio. (Does this mean OV’s not 5’4”?) “I’m not a monster. I’m a mother.” aaaaargh!!