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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.

Richard Siken

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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
Skins
Begins
Guess
Ends
Body
Boundary
Best
Actual
World
Boundaries
Skin

More quotes by Richard Siken

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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
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Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
Richard Siken
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I wouldn’t kill your pony. I’d like to believe it, anyway. I’d like to believe I wouldn’t drag you out in to the woods and leave you there, either. So far, it hasn’t come up.
Richard Siken
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Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?
Richard Siken
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Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again.
Richard Siken
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You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not           harmless. You are not                     breathing.
Richard Siken
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I’m not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn’t this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?
Richard Siken
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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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Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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I am singing now while Rome burns.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.
Richard Siken
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You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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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.
Richard Siken
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I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings/ and you say I'll give you anything but you never come through.
Richard Siken
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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
Richard Siken