Shaf 's Key Ideas from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong

Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.

I miss you more than I remember you.

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 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

When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?

Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you'd know it's a flood.

All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty.

I'm sorry I keep saying How are you? when I really mean Are you happy?

The thing is, I don't want my sadness to be othered from me just as I don't want my happiness to be othered. They're both mine. I made them, dammit.

Sometimes you are erased before you are given the choice of stating who you are.