Saeed Jones Quotes

Of course I wanted to see the world, to experience its fullness. I wanted to be a real part of it, rather than the passing shadow I so often felt like. I wanted to devour the world.

I sat there ablaze, struggling to apprehend a new, darkly radiant sense of self.

Alone and night-neoned, I write read drink drug grieve and all America keeps teaching me
is that there are so many ways to die in America which, frankly, is qwhite confusing
because this country killed you a decade ago and I’m still writing reading drinking
drugging grieving binging binging blacking out in the cozy, claustrophobic home
I’ve made out of how very, very much I miss you and the sky keeps throwing
down consequences and corrections and histories and nations, I mean,
come on, who can blame me for not wanting to go back outside?

The “I” it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, “I am no longer yours.

a current come to carry me in its arms through the streets,

"I don't watch the video
but I can feel it playing

on a loop in a room miles
away from where he keeps

dying behind my eyes. All
I have left are tiny twitches,

small choices. "Please," I beg
alone in the box of my dark,

"I don't want to hurt that way
today. I already hurt that way

yesterday. Please don't kill him
again.

The sweetness we deny ourselves because the world is wailing.

And then I did exactly what I thought all people who love each other do: I changed the subject; I changed myself; I erased everything I had just said; I erased myself so I could be her son again.

AC had been broken all summer. A breeze drifted into the car, then slipped away as if it knew to leave us alone.

This place so coursing and vibrant that wonders would flash past whether you were watching or not. The city’s electric hum would stay with me. I knew I had to return to those streets and sidewalks, crowded with people who had found a way to be themselves.

windows open to waterfalls

These hands can’t find the walls,

Being black can get you killed.

Being gay can get you killed.

Being a black gay boy is a death wish.

And one day, if you’re lucky, your life and death will become some artist’s new “project.

However many masks we invent and deploy, in the end, we cannot control what other people see when they look at us.

"The sons of single mothers inevitably encounter well-meaning family members who like to remind us of our role as "the man of the house." The statement usually made me wince, the way it implicitly merged the roles of son, father, and husband; the way it erased the grown woman to whom the house actually belonged."

How did other people concentrate with all these bodies just walking around all the time? So many men and boys, each with bodies to study and memorize.