Ocean Vuong - The Smallest Measure lyrics

Behind the fallen oak the Winchester rattles in a boy's early hands. A copper beard grazes his ear. Go ahead. She's all yours... Heavy with summer, I am the doe whose one hoof co*ks like a question ready to open roots. & like any god -forsaken thing, I want nothing more than my breaths. To lift this snout, carved from centuries of hunger toward the next low peach bruising in the season's clutch. Go ahead , the voice thicker now, drive her home. But the boy is crying into the carca** of a tree -- cheeks smeared with snot & chipped bark. Once, I came near enough to a man to smell a woman's scent in his quiet praying-- as some will do before raising their weapons closer to the sky. But through the grained mist that makes this morning's minutes, this smallest measure of distance, I see two arms unhinging the rifle from the boy's grip, its metallic shine sharpened through wet leaves I see the rifle...the rifle coming down, then gone. I see an orange cap touching an orange cap. No, a man bending over his son the way the hunted for centuries must bend over its own reflection to drink.