- 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
- you're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. and you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. 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 didn't even have a name for.
- richard siken
- eventually something you love is going to be taken away. and then you will fall to the floor crying. and then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you're falling to the floor crying thinking, "i am falling to the floor crying," but there's an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you're on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn't paint it very well.
- richard siken
- tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. these, our bodies, possessed by light. tell me we'll never get used to it.
- richard siken
- of course i wonder if they love me back, which, really, is besides the point. i don't do it to be adored, i do it because my love keeps getting bigger, and this is what happens.
- richard siken
- we have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.
- richard siken
- sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it was mine. i couldn't get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time.
- richard siken
- a man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he's still left with the river. a man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he's still left with his hands.
- richard siken
- if you love me, henry, you don't love me in a way i understand.
- richard siken
- everyone needs a place. it shouldn't be inside of someone else.
- richard siken
- sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.
- richard siken
- 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
- someone has to leave first. this is a very old story. there is no other version of this story.
- richard siken
- oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.
- richard siken
- i wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. i gave shape to my fears and made excuses. i varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. something's not right about what i'm doing but i'm still doing it-- living in the worst parts, ruining myself. my inner life is a sheet of black glass. if i fell through the floor i would keep falling. the enormity of my desire disgusts me.
- richard siken
- imagine this: you're driving. the sky's bright. you look great. in a word, in a phrase, it's a movie, you're the star. so smile for the camera, it's your big scene, you know your lines. i'm the director. i'm in a helicopter. i have a megaphone and you play along, because you want to die for love, you always have. imagine this: you're pulling the car over. somebody's waiting. 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. imagine: someone's pulling a gun, and you're jumping into the middle of it. you didn't think you'd feel this way. there's a gun in your hand. it feels hot. it feels oily. i'm the director and i'm screaming at you, i'm waving my arms in the sky, and everyone's watching, everyone's curious, everyone's holding their breath.
- richard siken
- i clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. i'd rather quit. i'd rather be sad. it's too much work.
- richard siken
- i wanted to be wanted and he was very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving. you could drown in those eyes, i said. so it's summer, so it's suicide, so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.
- richard siken
- 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.
- richard siken
- what is a ghost? something dead that seems to be alive. something dead that doesn't know it's dead.
- richard siken
- 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.
- richard siken
- i hope it's love. i'm trying really hard to make it love.
- richard siken
- you were crying too, smiling and crying in a way that made me even more hysterical. 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.
- richard siken
- you said i killed you — haunt me, then!
- emily brontë
- but love was always something heavy for me. something i had to carry.
- benjamin alire sáenz
- i could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; i would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. i would know him in death, at the end of the world.
- madeline miller
- and perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.
- madeline miller
- he is half of my soul, as the poets say.
- madeline miller
- name one hero who was happy. you can't.
- madeline miller
- someone, i tell you, will remember us, even in another time.
- sappho
- sweet mother, i cannot weave – slender aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl.
- sappho
- you burn me.
- sappho
- i'm nobody! who are you? are you nobody, too? then there's a pair of us - don't tell! they'd banish us, you know. how dreary to be somebody! how public, like a frog to tell your name the livelong day to an admiring bog!
- emily dickinson
- just in case you ever foolishly forget; i'm never not thinking of you.
- virginia woolf
- i'm sick to death of this particular self. i want another.
- virginia woolf
- for a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse. so collapse. crumble. this is not your destruction. this is your birth.
- zoe skylar
- i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
- e.e. cummings
- pylades: i’ll take care of you.
- orestes: it’s rotten work.
- pylades: not to me. not if it’s you.
- anne carson, euripides
- i know my life's meaningful because - and here he stopped, and looked shy, and was silent for a moment before he continued - because i'm a good friend. i love my friends, and i care about them, and i think i make them happy.
- hanya yanagihara, a little life
- people say nothing is impossible, but i do nothing every day.
- a.a. milne, winnie-the-pooh
- how lucky am i to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
- a.a. milne, winnie-the-pooh
- it was... not love at first sight exactly. but - familiarity. like: oh, hello, it’s you. it’s going to be you.
- mhairi mcfarlane
feb 23 2022 ∞
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