Status Updates From Crush: Twentieth Anniversar...

i just don’t want to die anymore!!!

aids. wojnarowicz. hujar.

hands + wrists motif

we were inside the train car when i started to cry. you were crying too,
smiling and crying in a way that made me
even more hysterical. you said i could have anything i wanted, but i
just couldn’t say it out loud.
actually, you said “love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. it’s like a religion. it’s
terrifying. no one
will ever want to sleep with you.”

and words, little words,
words too small for any hope or promise, not really soothing
but soothing nonetheless.

i take off my hands and i give them to you but you don’t
want them, so i take them back
and put them on the wrong way, the wrong wrists.

i couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time.

I was adrift and the words wouldn't hit me, so I found a video of Siken reading one of his poems from this book, Straw house, straw dog, and read a tiny bit of context about this collection and now I'm sinking and these poems feel like tiny black holes, sometimes I think I'm too dumb to read poetry, but now I'm just slightly devastated

Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.