Richard Siken

i do know some things

sage lynn

Her boyfriend at the time was a walk-in: a man so previously sad that his original self had left its body and something else had grabbed the wheel.

We are the stories we tell ourselves. We are what we say we are. What am I? I’m not sure I want to know anymore and I’m not supposed to say that. I’m tired of telling this story. Let’s put on a show. I’ll throw my voice and populate the landscape. Let me invent an imaginary friend so I can talk to myself, or at least take the ghost of my missing friends and pretend that they’re still here. 

Hey buddy, you’re gonna be fine. We’re not going anywhere.

 Let me say it in the third person, talking about myself: 

Van Gogh had a paintbrush. He struggled with yellow. He was 700 things on a small shelf, touching. When he died he was survived by everything that was left.

When you build on a graveyard everything is a graveyard, and everything is a graveyard because nothing is free from history. It floods the landscape, it burns the cities to the ground. Tell someone to get over it and you’ve made yourself an enemy, but you have to get over it. There is no room, there is no new room. The fire is not moving away.

When you fall into a well you have to sit there for a minute. You have to respect the well before you try to get out. So what’s there to be learned? There’s nothing to be learned. This isn’t a lesson, it’s just a fact.

i do know some things quotes

Join the club