All those wounding words we can’t – and others can’t – take back: misfired words.

from TO MY FATHER/TO MY FUTURE SON
-Ocean Vuong
The stars are not hereditary. —Emily Dickinson

Turn back & find the book I left
for us, filled
with all the colors of the sky
forgotten by gravediggers.
Use it.
Use it to prove how the stars
were always what we knew

they were: the exit wounds
of every
misfired word.

Photo by Tobias Polinder.