Richard Siken - Saying Your Names lyrics

Chemical names, bird names, names of fire and flight and snow, baby names, paint names, delicate names like bones in the body, Rumplestiltskin names that are always changing, names that no one's ever able to figure out. Names of spells and names of hexes, names cursed quietly under the breath, or called out loudly to fill the yard, calling you inside again, calling you home. Nicknames and pet names and baroque French monikers, written in shorthand, written in longhand, scrawled illegibly in brown ink on the backs of yellowing photographs, or embossed on envelopes lined with gold. Names called out across the water, names I called you behind your back, sour and delicious, secret and unrepeatable, the names of flowers that open only once, shouted from balconies, shouted from rooftops, or muffled by pillows, or whispered in sleep, or caught in the throat like a lump of meat. I try, I do. I try and try. A happy ending? Sure enough — Hello darling, welcome home. I'll call you darling, hold you tight. We are not traitors but the lights go out. It's dark. Sweetheart, is that you? There are no tears, no pictures of him squarely. A seaside framed in gla**, and boats, those little boats with sails aflutter, shining lights upon the water, lights that splinter when they hit the pier. His voice on tape, his name on the envelope, the soft sound of a body falling off a bridge behind you, the body hardly even makes a sound. The waters of the dead, a clear road, every lover in the form of stars, the road blocked. All night I stretched my arms across him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing with all my skin and bone Please keep him safe. Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces. Makes a cathedral, him pressing against me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars. Names of heat and names of light, names of collision in the dark, on the side of the bus, in the bark of the tree, in ballpoint pen on jeans and hands and the backs of matchbooks that then get lost. Names like pain cries, names like tombstones, names forgotten and reinvented, names forbidden or overused. Your name like a song I sing to myself, your name like a box where I keep my love, your name like a nest in the tree of love, your name like a boat in the sea of love — O now we're in the sea of love! Your name like detergent in the washing machine. Your name like two X's like punched-in eyes, like a drunk cartoon pa**ed out in the gutter, your name with two X's to mark the spots, to hold the place, to keep the treasure from becoming ever lost. I'm saying your name in the grocery store, I'm saying your name on the bridge at dawn. Your name like an animal covered with frost, your name like a music that's been transposed, a suit of fur, a coat of mud, a kick in the pants, a lungful of gla**, the sails in wind and the slap of waves on the hull of a boat that's sinking to the sound of mermaids singing songs of love, and the tug of a simple profound sadness when it sounds so far away. Here is a map with a your name fora capital, here is an arrow to prove a point: we laugh and it pits the world against us, we laugh, and we've got nothing left to lose, and our hearts turn red, and the river rises like a barn on fire. I came to tell you, we'll swim in the water, we'll swim like something sparkling underneath the waves. Our bodies shivering, and the sound of our breathing, and the shore so far away. I'll use my body like a ladder, climbing to the thing behind it, saying farewell to flesh, farewell to everything caught underfoot and flattened. Names of poisons, names of handguns, names of places we've been together, names of people we'd be together, Names of endurance, names of devotion, street names and place names and all the names of our dark heaven crackling in their pan. It's a bed of straw, darling. It sure as sh** is. If there was one thing I could save from the fire, he said, the broken arms of the sycamore, the eucalyptus still trying to climb out of the yard — your breath on my neck like a music that holds my hands down, kisses as they burn their way along my spine — or rain, our bodies wet, clothes clinging arm to elbow, clothes clinging nipple to groin — I'll be right here. I'm waiting. Say hallelujah, say goodnight, say it over the canned music and your feet won't stumble, his face getting larger, the rest blurring on every side. And angels, about twelve angels, angels knocking on your head right now, hello hello, a flash in the sky, would you like to meet him there, in Heaven? Imagine a room, a sudden glow. Here is my hand, my heart, my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated cities at the center of me, and here is the center of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we can drink from, but I can't go through with it. I just don't want to die anymore.