Quotes from Richard Siken

Is there an acceptable result? Do we mean something when we talk?

I try, I do. I try and try. A happy ending?

I'll call you darling, hold you tight.

We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn't find my cigarettes. You said, "Hurry up!" but I was worried there would be a hold-up and we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind the frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours. You said "Don't be silly," so I followed you into the store. We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say, "Nobody move!" I leaned over and whispered in your ear, "I told you so.

They want to stop but they can't stop. They don't know what they're doing.

You want it to mean something. Sad pink cakes. Five strange blue things. You want to have it glued together.

and you're off, you're on the run, a fugitive driving away from something shameful and half-remembered.

You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn't say it out loud. Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It's like a religion. It's terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.

and then the question behind every question: What happens next?

It's simple: it isn't over, it's just begun. It's green. It's still green.

We could pull it apart, spend our whole lives pulling it apart and have no time left to do anything smart with the pieces.

The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I'm alive

He had green eyes, so I wanted to sleep with him—

It's hard to talk about what you believe while you are believing it. Fervor reduces thought to shorthand and all we get is an icon.

You see it as a room, a tabernacle, the dark hotel. You're in the hallway again, and you open the door, and if you're ready you'll see it, but maybe one part of your mind decides that the other parts aren't ready, and then you don't remember where you've been

We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven

smiling in a way that made me frightened.

I'll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there?

here we are at the place where I get to beg for it where I get to say Please, for just one night, will you lay down next to me, we can leave our clothes on, we can stay all buttoned up? or will I say Roll over and let me fuck you till you puke, Henry, you owe me this much, you can indulge me this at least, can't you? but we both know how it goes. I say I want you inside me and you hold my head underwater, I say I want you inside me and you split me open with a knife.

Your name like a song I sing to myself, your name like a box where I keep my love, your name like a boat in the sea of love—O now we're in the sea of love!

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

the sails in wind and the slap of waves on the hull of a boat that's sinking to the sound of mermaids singing songs of love, and the tug of a simple profound sadness when it sounds so far away.

The fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left broken in the brown dirt.

And no one can ever figure out what you want, and you won't tell them, and you realize the person who loves you isn't the one you thought it would be, and you don't trust him to love you in a way you would enjoy.