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I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.

Richard Siken

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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
Taken
Feelings
Ends
Scars
Body
Scar
Something
Swear
Like
Search
Empty
Feeling

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I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
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Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks
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I am singing now while Rome burns.
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Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.
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He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.
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We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much.
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I'm bleeding, I'm not just making conversation.
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I don't know where I end and the world begins. My best guess? Skin. It's the only actual boundary between the body and the world, between a body and any other body.
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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.
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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.
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I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything.
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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.
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Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?
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Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
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You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room.
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The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.
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Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
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The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.
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Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.
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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.
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