Austin King

“This is the place I finally learned what it meant
to dance alone to the song you put in my chest.

Thanks for the symphony.

I can still hear it when I think of you,
and it is so much like remembering.”
― Caitlyn Siehl, What We Buried

“Start by pulling him out of the fire and
hoping that he will forget the smell.
He was supposed to be an angel but they took him
from that light and turned him into something hungry,
something that forgets what his hands are for when they
aren’t shaking.
He will lose so much, and you will watch it all happen
because you had him first, and you would let the world
break its own neck if it means keeping him.
Start by wiping the blood off of his chin and
pretending to understand.
Repeat to yourself
“I won’t leave you, I won’t leave you”
until you fall asleep and dream of the place
where nothing is red.
When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it.
Oh, when you used to sing it to sleep.
Here are your upturned hands.
Give them to him and watch how he prays
like he is learning his first words.
Start by pulling him out of another fire,
and putting him back together with the pieces
you find on the floor.
There is so much to forgive, but you do not
know how to forget.
When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you are the reason it has become so mangled.
Here is your humble offering,
obliterated and broken in the mouth
of this abandoned church.
He has come back to stop the world
from turning itself inside out, and you love him, you do,
so you won’t let him.
Tell him that you will never know any better.”
― Caitlyn Siehl

“We don't fall in love with people because they're good people. We fall in love with people whose darkness we recognise. You can fall in love with a person for all of the right reasons, but that kind of love can still fall apart. But when you fall in love with a person because your monsters have found a home in them-- that's the kind of love that owns your skin and bones. Love, I am convinced, is found in the darkness. It is the candle in the night.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“My mother always told me
No monster lived beneath my bed,
But she had failed to warn me
It laid on top of it instead.”
― Erin Hanson