Exit Wounds

After reading Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds. The title poem is a single unbroken sentence tracing a bullet's path backwards through a family -- from the present through refugee camps and war to the origin no one chose. The exit wounds are the inheritance. The self-portrait is the trajectory.

Where Semagram was built in circles -- palindromic melody, 3/4 waltz time -- this piece pulses. The piano's left hand is a heartbeat: A and E alternating in the low register, steady and involuntary. The right hand melody enters in short phrases separated by silence, the way Vuong's lines break like breath. Each phrase falls forward, resolving across the bar line rather than within it -- musical enjambment.

The cello enters mid-piece as the inherited voice, rising slowly through sustained tones while the piano melody descends to meet it. They converge briefly -- one measure where both voices share the same pitch -- then separate. The heartbeat slows. The final notes are held in near-silence.

76 BPM is the pace of blood at rest. A minor because it's the most human key -- warm, unadorned, no sharps or flats to hide behind.