the bless'd ones

• Atheris squamigera, common names:  green bush viper, variable bush viper, leaf viper and others, is a venomous viper species that can be found in West and central Africa: Ivory Coast and Ghana, eastward through southern Nigeria to Cameroon, southern Central African Republic, Gabon, Congo, DR Congo, northern Angola, Uganda, Tanzania (Rumanika Game Reserve), western Kenya and Bioko Island. . No subspecies are currently recognized. It’s truly a miraculously beautiful snake. 
• Habitat preference: Found mostly in rain forest. Said to prefer relatively low and thick, flowering bushes.
• Venom: Bites from this particular species have resulted in at least one report of severe hematological complications as well as two deaths.

all text taken from the poetry book night sky with exit wounds by ocean vuong.

• ‘  in the body, where everything has a price, i was a beggar.  ‘
• ‘  he was singing, which is why i remember it. his voice — it filled me to the core like a skeleton.  ‘
• ‘  even my name knelt down inside me, asking to be spared.  ‘
• ‘  it is all i remember.  ‘
• ‘  i was alive. i didn’t know there was a better reason.  ‘
• ‘  i lost it all with my eyes wide open.  ‘
• ‘  do you know who i am?  ‘
• ‘  how easily a boy in a dress the red of shut eyes vanishes beneath the sound of his own galloping.  ‘
• ‘  i’m dreaming of a curtain of snow falling from her shoulders.  ‘
• ‘  snow scraping against the window. snow shredded with gunfire. red sky.  ‘
• ‘  show me how ruin makes a home out of hip bones.  ‘
• ‘  let every river envy our mouths. let every kiss hit the body like a season.  ‘
• ‘  if you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.  ‘
• ‘  if we make it to shore, i will name our son after this water. i will learn to love a monster.  ‘
• ‘  he laughs despite knowing he has ruined every beautiful thing just to prove beauty cannot change him.  ‘
• ‘  hey! you didn’t have to go this far. why did you go so far?  ‘
• ‘  sometimes i feel like an ampersand.  ‘
• ‘  everyone can forget us — as long as you remember.  ‘
• ‘  i hold the gun & wonder if an entry wound in the night would make a hole as wide as morning.  ‘
• ‘  there’s a lighthouse. some nights you are the lighthouse, some nights the sea.  ‘
• ‘  what this means is that i don’t know desire other than the need to be shattered & rebuilt.  ‘
• ‘  even tomorrow you will have today.  ‘
• ‘  you’ll never forget yourself the way god forgets his hands.  ‘
• ‘  the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting.  ‘
• ‘  my mother said i could be anything i wanted — but i chose to live.  ‘
• ‘  i am ready to be every animal you leave behind.  ‘
• ‘  and this is how we loved: a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers though my hair — my hair a wildfire.  ‘
• ‘  when our lips touched the day closed into a coffin.  ‘
• ‘  the year is a distance we’ve traveled in circles.  ‘
• ‘  we made it, baby. we’re riding in the back of the black limousine.  ‘
• ‘  i love my country. i pretend nothing is wrong.  ‘
• ‘  i’m holding your still-hot thoughts in, darling, my sweet, sweet ___.  ‘
• ‘  you want to tell him it’s okay that the night is also a grave we climb out of.  ‘
• ‘  you say thank you thank you thank you because you haven’t learned the purpose of forgive me.  ‘
• ‘  you’re so quiet you’re almost tomorrow.  ‘
• ‘  to love another man — is to leave no one behind to forgive me. i want to leave no one behind.  ‘
• ‘  even though he’s gone, i still want to be clean.  ‘
• ‘  if only the rain were gasoline, your tongue a lit match, & you can change without disappearing.  ‘
• ‘  he dies each night you close your eyes & hear his slow exhale.  ‘
• ‘  wait, i have something to say.  ‘
• ‘  as if my finger, tracing your collarbone behind closed doors, was enough to erase myself.  ‘
• ‘  to forget we built this house knowing it won’t last.  ‘
• ‘  it’s funny. i always knew i’d be warmest beside by man.  ‘
• ‘  don’t laugh. just tell me the story again.  ‘
• ‘  speak — until your voice is nothing but the crackle of charred bones.  ‘
• ‘  look how happy we are to be no one & still american.  ‘
• ‘  i’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven/  ‘
• ‘  say you’d kill for it.  ‘
• ‘  don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here?  ‘
• ‘  silly me. i thought love was real and the body imaginary.  ‘
• ‘  i said yes because you asked me to stay.  ‘
• ‘  there is so much i want to tell you. how my greatest accolade was to walk across the brooklyn bridge & not think of flight.  ‘
• ‘  you will always remember what you were doing when it hurts the most.  ‘
• ‘  dearest father, forgive me for i have seen.  ‘
• ‘  once, i fell in love during a slow-motion car crash.  ‘
• ‘  i wrote a better hour onto the page & watched the fire take it back.  ‘
• ‘  this means you are not alone.  ‘
• ‘  don’t stay here. don’t cry anymore.  ‘
• ‘  i promise to stop soon.  ‘
• ‘  how come depression makes me feel more alive?  ‘
• ‘  i shouldn’t have, but he had the hands of someone i used to know. someone i was used to.  ‘
• ‘  i dreamed i walked barefoot all the way to your house in the snow. everything was the blue of smudged ink and you were still alive.  ‘
• ‘  here. that’s all i wanted to be.  ‘
• ‘  don’t worry. your father is only your father until one of you forgets.  ‘
• ‘  the end of the road is so far ahead it is already behind us.  ‘
• ‘  don’t be afraid, the gunfire is only the sound of people trying to live a little longer & failing.  ‘
• ‘  remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.  ‘
• ‘  the difference between prayer & mercy is how you move the tongue.  ‘
• ‘  so what if my feathers are burning. i never asked for flight.  ‘