War of the Foxes

by Richard Siken

I have my body and you have yours. Believe it if you can. Negative space is silly.

It should be enough. To make something beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be.

You’d break your heart to make it bigger,

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

All thoughts finish themselves eventually.

Something’s not right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it— living in the worst parts, ruining myself.

Never finish a war without starting another. I’ve seen your true face: the back of your head. If you were walking away, keep walking.

Everyone needs a place.

sometimes the man felt like a stone—solid, inevitable—

The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.

We carve up the world all the time.

Willpower, gunpowder, concussive thunder.

My body is a graveyard, says the landscape.

History is painted by the winners. Keep your paints wet. Trust me, I have things to say.

Let’s admit, without apology, what we do to each other. We know who our enemies are. We know.

This is one love. There are many loves but only one war.

You cannot have an opponent if you keep saying yes.

You cannot get in the way of anyone’s path to happiness, it also does no good. The problem is figuring out which part is the path and which part is the happiness. It’s a blessing: every day someone shows up at the fence. And when no one shows up, a different kind of blessing. In the wrong light anyone can look like a darkness.

What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once. Add a second light and you get a second darkness, it’s only fair.

How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?

Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.