[text ID: Cause I couldn’t make you love me / And I’m tired of pulling your teeth /end ID]
[text ID: This is the map of my heart, the landscape after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me tight, it’s getting cold. /end ID]
[text ID: You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened. Your co-workers ask if everything’s okay and you tell them you’re just tired. And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile. /end ID]
[text ID: You are a fever I am learning to live with, and everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel. /end ID]
[text ID: Let’s say you’ve swallowed a bad thing and now it’s got its hands inside you. This is the essence of love and failure. /end ID]
[text ID: A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands. /end ID]
Mary L. Macomber, Night and her Daughter Sleep (1902) / Richard Siken, You Are Jeff (2008)
[text ID: Take the light inside you, like a blessing, like a knee in the chest, holding onto it and not letting go. Now let it go. /end ID]
[text ID: I’ll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. /end ID]
[text ID: They’re hurling their bodies down the freeway to the smell of gasoline, which is the sound of a voice saying I told you so. Yes, you did dear. /end ID]
Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl, Zwei Hände mit Stock (1844-1900) / Richard Siken, Unfinished Duet (2005)
[text ID: He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He likes the feel of the coffeepot. More than the hacksaw? /end ID]
[text ID: Two brothers are fighting by the side of the road. Two motorbikes have fallen over on the shoulder, leaking oil into the dirt, while the interlocking brothers grapple and swing. You see them through the backseat window as you and your parents drive past. You are twelve years old. You do not have a brother. You have never experienced anything this ferocious or intentional with another person. Your mother is pretending that she hasn’t seen anything. Your father is fiddling with the knobs of the radio. There is an empty space next to you in the backseat of the station wagon. Make it the shape of everything you need. Now say hello. /end ID]