“It is too heavy, says the paper. You lack restraint. I was sleeping in whiteness, crowns of snow, and you woke me and told me your dream, my blank face upturned, listening. Large thing, heavy, and there is a river, we must cross it together. I was sleeping and you woke me I am not safe my doors don’t lock. You came to me while we were sleeping, we were both sleeping, and there is a river and you asked me to hold this for you. I am holding this for you. It is heavy and the river rolls over in its bed. Black river and the seedpods of your dreaming blossom while you are gone and I am here alone, my painted face singing. You say you are doing one thing but you are doing another and you are gone and you leave the paint and the paint is thick and heavy. You have overpainted again, and again the river to cross, and again the blossoms of your dreaming. Too big, huge and heavy, they bloom, keep blooming, lilac and magnolia and jasmine and tuber rose. Wash me. You were sleeping in darkness, batwing and treeshadow, there is no river but we must cross it together. Wipe my face you must trust me you have painted over the dream the paper remembers, the first strokes, the original landscape. The paper always remembers, says the paper.”

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.”

Scheherazade, 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.”

You Are Jeff, Richard Siken