Quotes from Richard Siken

Someone is digging your grave right now.

I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do. A box made out of leaves. What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless. Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else. I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon. From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale. I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority. Everything casts a shadow. Your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything.

In the dream I don't tell anyone, you put your head in my lap.

Cut me open and the light streams out. Stitch me up and the light keeps streaming out between the stitches

You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you.

You are here. You are here. You're still right here.

Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in?

I wouldn't kill your pony. I'd like to believe it, anyway. I'd like to believe I wouldn't drag you out in to the woods and leave you there, either. So far, it hasn't come up.

Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it— living in the worst parts, ruining myself.

Anything past the horizon is invisible, it can only be imagined. You want to see the future but you only see the sky.

You just wanted to prove that there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet.

Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart.

What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can't light up all sides at once.

You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn't say it out loud.

When you have nothing to say, set something on fire. A blurry landscape is useless.

You're going to die in your best friend's arms. And you play along because it's funny, because it's written down, you've memorized it, it's all you know. I say the phrases that keep it all going, and everybody plays along.

I've been in your body, baby, and it was paradise. I've been in your body and it was a carnival ride.

You are a fever I am learning to live with.

I will come back from the dead for you.

I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

Someone is digging your grave right now. Someone is drawing a bath to wash you clean, he said, so think of the wind, so happy, so warm. It's a fairy tale, the story underneath the story, sliding down the polished halls, lightning here and gone. We make these ridiculous idols so we can to what's behind them, but what happens after we get up the ladder? Do we simply stare at what's horrible and forgive it?

History is painted by the winners.

I cut off my head and threw it in the sky. It turned into birds. I called it thinking.