Max

“There’s smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. It’s a Western,
Henry. It’s a downright shoot-em-up. We’ve made a graveyard
out of the bone white afternoon.
It’s another wrong-man-dies scenario, and we keep doing it Henry,
keep saying until we get it right … but we always win and we never quit.
See, we’ve won again,
here we are at the place where I get to beg for it, where I get to say Please,
for just one night, will you lie down next to me, we can leave our clothes on,
we can stay all buttoned up …
But we both know how it goes—I say I want you inside me and you hold
my head underwater. I say I want you inside me and you split me open
with a knife.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.”
― Richard Siken, Crush