Quotes from Richard Siken

In these dreams it's always you: the boy in the sweatshirt, the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge. Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.

Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all forgiven, even though we didn't deserve it.

You cannot get in the way of anyone's path to God. You can, but it does no good. Every spy knows this. Somesay God is where we put our sorrow. God says, Which one of you fuckers can get to me first?

the radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night is thinking. it's thinking of love. it's thinking of stabbing us to death and leaving our bodies in a dumpster. that's a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone.

I wanted to hurt you but the victory is that I could not stomach it.

These are the dreams we should be having. I shouldn't have to clean them up like this.

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?' 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.

He was not dead yet, not exactly— parts of him were dead already, certainly other parts were still only waiting for something to happen, something grand, but it isn't always about me, he keeps saying, though he's talking about the only heart he knows— He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There's a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place— well then, game over.

Makes a cathedral, him pressing against me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars.

Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?

The boy's no good. The boy is just no good. / but he takes you in his arms and pushes your flesh around to see if you could ever be ugly to him.

I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.

and you play along, because you want to die for love, you always have.

But damn if there isn't anything sexier than a slender boy with a handgun, a fast car, a bottle of pills.

It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same running from something larger than yourself story

Land a man in a landscape and he'll try to conquer it. Make him handsome and you're a fascist, make him ugly and you're saying nothing new.

I'm sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.

Personally, I'm a mess of conflicting impulses—I'm independent and greedy and I also want to belong and share and be a part of the whole.

I'm sorry. We know how it works. The world is no longer mysterious.

From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.

You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for.

It's a blessing: every day someone shows up at the fence. And when no one shows up, a different kind of blessing. In the wrong light anyone can look like a darkness.

Even when I look away I am still looking.