Saeed Jones Quotes

It seemed as if my life was waiting for me outside that room, like a polite guest I'd left behind at the table. It was rude to keep him waiting. It helped to think of my life as someone separate from me, a person who didn't deserve to be abandoned.

I though productivity was what survival looked like.

People don’t just happen, We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ‘I’ it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, ‘I am no longer yours.

I sank into the depths to see you as the lake saw you: cut in half by the surface, taut legs kicking, the rest of you sky.

...and because you’re young and don’t know the difference between abandoned and alone just like your mother’s heart won’t know the difference between beat and attack.

I wish I knew a woman who was both the light and every shadow the light pierces.

The spectacle of ordinary gay men baffled me.

The sweetness we deny ourselves because the world is wailing.

I grieve the men
I mistook for one another and the mistakes I mistook for men.

I’ve lined my throat
with the river bottom’s best
silt,

allowed my fingers to shrivel
and be taken for crawfish.

I’ve laced my eyelashes with algae.

I blink emerald.
I blink sea glass green.

I am whatever gleams
just under the surface.

Scoop at my sparkle. I’ll give you nothing
but disturbed reflection.

Bring your ear to the water
and I’ll sing you

down into my arms.

Let me show you how

to make your lungs
a home for minnows, how

to let them flicker

like silver

in and out of your mouth
like last words,

like air.

"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.

Toni Morrison’s sentences were like rivers with murky bottoms. They didn’t obey the rules I was learning in school. When I stepped in, I couldn’t see my feet; I retreated back to the shore.

Reach high for the stars that hidden in your soul. Dream precedes the goal

windows open to waterfalls

They die bright, fantastic deaths every chance they get.