Quotes from Richard Siken

I want to tell you this story without having to be in it

I take off my hands and I give them to you but you don't want them, so I take them back and put them on the wrong way, the wrong wrists.

Kissing degenerates into biting.

This boy, half-destroyed, screaming Drive into that tree, drive off the embankment. Henry, make something happen.

They want you to love the whole damn world but you won't

You have never experienced anything this ferocious or intentional with another person.

and you don't trust him to love you in a way you would enjoy

And words, little words, words too small for any hope or promise, not really soothing

Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other.

I have told you where I'm coming from, so put it together.

You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don't work.

He's next to you, right next to you in fact, so close, or . . . he isn't.

The world doesn't know what to do with my love. Because it isn't used to being loved. It's a framework problem.

This is the place, you say to yourself, this is the place where everything starts to begin, the wounds reveal a thicker skin and suddenly there is no floor.

Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me?

There are many names in history but none of them are ours.

Tonight you're thinking of cities under crowns of snow and I stare at you like I'm looking through a window, counting birds.

And the part where I push you flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks, shut up I'm getting to it.

I don't think I can take this much longer.

You keep singing along to that song I hate. Stop singing.

You were burned, you were about to burn, you're still on fire.

I wanted to fall down right there but I knew you wouldn't catch me because you're dead.

we laugh and it pits the world against us, we laugh, and we've got nothing left to lose

We have not been given all the words necessary. We have not been given anything at all.