“You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chestwhere a heart would fit perfectlyand he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place –well then, game over.”Richard Siken
“Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lakeand dress them in warm clothes again.”Richard Siken
“Fairy tales have rules. You are a princess or you aren’t. You are pure at heart or you aren’t. If you are pure at heart, or lucky, you might catch a break.”Richard Siken
“Vanity, in a fairy tale, will make you evil. Vanity in the real world will drive you nuts. Vanity makes you say things like “I deserved a better life than this.”Richard Siken
“And the gentleness that comes,not from the absence of violence, but despitethe abundance of it.”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretendingthat this skin is your skin, these hands your hands,these shins, these soapy flanks”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?”Richard Siken Source: War of the Foxes
“Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.”Richard Siken
“You wanted to think of yourself as someone who did these kinds of things. You wanted to be in love and he happened to get in the way.”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“We can do anything. It’s not becauseour hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what westruggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bringyour friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m makingthose long noodles you love so much.”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“You're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.”Richard Siken Source: Crush
“Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone—assume a middle distance and transcend myself—but I’m taking to you and you know it.”Richard Siken