Crush by Richard Siken
Love in resignation.
Scheherazade
Seaside Improvisation
'Crush’ is a collection of poems by Richard Siken that won the ‘Yale Series of Younger Poets’ award in 2004 and was published as a book in 2005.
Fueled by the recent death of his boyfriend at the time, Richard Siken wrote these series of poems hoping to encapsulate the sensation of love, grief, and the tenacity of which these come into play throughout relationships.
I feel that Siken nails the humanity of love with all its flaws and vulnerabilities. I’ve yet to find simplicity in the way love disarms you. It blindsides people and leaves them at its mercy. I find that love brings out the most unassuming parts of a person; which is why I appreciate Siken’s poems.
His writing and artistry allow these consuming emotions to exist on paper – concrete and solid for people to hold – whilst still keeping its complexities intact, appreciating the beauty of our emotions without trying to give them structure.
Scheherazade
Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again. How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses. It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policeman's radio, how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.
Personally, this poem strikes me as a desperate plea for a lover to never leave. It begs for commitment and calls for a disregard of any negativity this love may bring between them. This is about a love born out of desperation and hunger for someone else, but it is sustained through patience — as well as the decision to stay.
The title ‘Scheherazade’ originates from the wife of a Persian Sultan, Shahryar. After Shahryar’s first wife and queen committed infidelity, he went on a hysteric rage. Shahryar never trusted or opened up to another person – until Scheherazade. The story goes that the monarch resolved to marry a new wife every day, and to have her beheaded the next morning before she could dishonor him.
On their wedding night, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her younger sister. And so, she weaves one last bedtime story for her sister and has Shahryar listen in. Ending this story on a cliffhanger, she promises to continue it the next night; engaging Shahryar and prickling his curiosity enough to overcome his bloodlust.
Hence, night after night, Scheherazade lets the endings of her stories hang between the two individuals, choosing to fight for the Sultan’s time and vulnerability. Scheherazade is the first person to connect and reach out to Shahryar, never allowing his flaws to scare or deter her from giving him another chance at love and trust. This is what I feel the poem encapsulates.
It portrays an absolute resignation of yourself to someone you’ve put all your faith in. You invest every ounce of yourself into the other person, silently begging them to meet you halfway.
‘Tell me about the dream...’ is a direct allusion to Scheherazade's story.
I like to think that going into a relationship is a form of commitment where both parties are obliged to engage with each other in routine and intimate ways. You entertain and humour them with jokes you’ve made a handful of times because you know it’ll make them laugh.
To me, this poem is about a love that never grows tired. It sparks a restlessness inside me as it portrays unconstrained love and yearning within relationships. No matter how many times it revisits old memories, old stories, or old jokes, it keeps its clutch on you like the grating melody on a policeman’s radio that you can’t seem to forget.
Additionally, I think that the poem makes love seem addictive and dangerous. It makes love seem like destruction and ruin. However, it also shows me the right person would stay with you throughout the restlessness and chaos. That the right person will slice apples for you in the kitchen; they will roll up the carpet and dance into the night if you asked them to.
My favourite aspect of the poem is that it highlights proper love should never grow constant. Normalcy should never creep into love lest we start taking it for granted. I adore this notion of never being fully satisfied with the relationship, of always wanting more of your lover after every kiss. Of being so enraptured by a person you want to meld with them the same way noon blends into night.
‘Scheherazade’ speaks to me of a love that is inconsolable and all-encompassing like light; a form of love that I do not want to recover, or move on from. It tells me of tentative stories that will never be mine; stories and dreams that have constantly been repeated throughout history between lovers.
I’ll never understand what happened to the horses as they ran, but someone else and their lover will. Like history and the winding roots of trees, these stories never truly end. They are kept alive in this very poem. And I have learnt that love is a decision to be warm with your lover when you can choose to be cruel.
It has helped me know that true love is feeling at home with someone, despite the chaos around you.
Seaside Improvisation
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. The yard is dark, the tomatoes are next to the whitewashed wall, the book on the table is about Spain, the windows are painted shut. Tonight you're thinking of cities under crowns of snow and I stare at you like I'm looking through a window, counting birds. You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you're not miserable. You do the math, you expect the trouble. The seaside town. The electric fence. Draw a circle with a piece of chalk. Imagine standing in a constant cone of light. Imagine surrender. Imagine being useless. A stone on the path means the tea's not ready, a stone in the hand means somebody's angry, the stone inside you still hasn't hit bottom.
Opposed to the mood in Scheherazade, this poem portrays a resignation of love instead of a resignation of oneself; choosing to give up on the pursuit of love and its reciprocation.
It is about foregoing your own emotions and trading your wellbeing for heartache.
To me, this portrays a sacrifice; made in the name of happiness for the person you love. You are liberating them of yourself in exchange for the burden of loss and inadequacy.
‘Imagine surrender.’ I will give myself up, for your happiness, ‘Imagine being useless.’ You no longer have a need for me within your life.
With this poem, I am pushed to consider that the most painful experience love can bring, is to see someone fall out of love with you.
This is why the poem excessively tugs on my heartstring – the heartbreak is so potent in this stanza — exuding grief, and forfeiture. When we fall in love, we are predisposed to wanting the absolute best for our lover. You would go out of your way to bring them peace and content.
So what are we to do when we find ourselves at an impasse; when the clause for their happiness requires our departure?
‘You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that,’ but why couldn’t I be a part of that happiness?
This poem is frantic, and it is ridden with the panic of loss and inadequacy.
‘Tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.’ Tell me I have a chance at saving this, tell me that there was love, tell me we were real.
It is a constant litany on the remains of a relationship; masked as a plea for the lover to stay.
This poem brings me to the harrowing realisation that regardless of my desire to love and look after a person, it does not erase their abilities to refuse me. All the care and effort in the world, cannot determine my place in someone’s heart. I realise from this poem, that dismantling myself into pieces and becoming digestable for the people around me, does no good in improving any form of alleged inadequacy.
Refusal still patiently waits for a chance to strike, poised at the tip of a tongue.
Albeit the awareness that this rejection does not fault the existence of your love, it does not stop the ideas that we may have been inadequate from the very start. Neither does it stop the ideas that we have inevitably failed to amount to anything substantial — failing to amount to anything worth staying for.
The knowledge that humans can grow out of love as time passes is bewildering to me. Worse still when I realise that perhaps we grow out of each other.
That as time passes, we bend and mold out of shape from one another; completely barring us from existing side by side. Oftentimes, this phenomenon catches people off-guard – creeping unexpectedly between two people before they can repair whatever has been severed.
I cannot bear the thought of knowing a person for so long that I have garnered the ability to glimpse inside their mind; memorising the disorder of their home, their habits and tells, only to realise you’ve been blindsided.
And in your love-sick haze, you’ve missed the blaring sirens warning you of the change in their hearts. Before you know it, the familiar cluster of tomatoes against the white-washed wall of their home has grown moldy and infested with maggots. The book about Spain on their kitchen table has been sold off, and the yard of their house is no longer dark.
Familiar and unfamiliar sights blur together; the memories of who you and your lover were, stare back at you with indistinguishable features. Your joint plans and aspirations fade into the background like static noise, and there is no one you can blame for this misfortune.
Perhaps I can blame myself. Perhaps I can blame my lover. Perhaps I can perform an autopsy on the relationship and figure out where it went wrong...
‘Seaside Improvisation’ speaks to me of the extent a relationship can ruin you. It can tear our defenses down, bearing us in our most vulnerable state, before abruptly disappearing – leaving you winded and standing on imbalanced legs.
Siken has expertly captured the gnawing effect of a fading relationship. It creates a bottomless pit for your love, forming the realisation you no longer have a place to put it. It instills this constant sense of inadequacy within yourself. And it tells the honest possibility of living the rest of your life waiting for a shoe to drop; waiting to be left and abandoned.
It has helped make me aware of the weight love carries, and it reminds me not to be complacent with where I choose to put it.