October 2020

I wish I had something else. A redemptive imagination, for example. The life of the mind is a disappointment

What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead.

Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
                                                                                              Crossed out.
           Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something
underneath the floorboards.
                  Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle
                                                                                               reconstructed.
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all
              forgiven,
even though we didn’t deserve it.

Richard Siken, “Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out” (via grimdarkacademia)

To be a bird, or a flock of birds doing something together, one or many, starling or murmuration. To be a man on a hill, or all the men on all the hills, or half a man shivering in the flock of himself. These are some choices.

Richard Siken, from “The Language of the Birds” (via voirlvmer)