Let the Right One Slip In

“Let the Right One Slip In” names Part Five and supplies the section’s central image: someone is allowed across a threshold. The phrase also appears in the Morrissey song title cited beneath the section, linking the heading to an epigraph that asks what can—and cannot—be made to happen through desire.

Part Five’s Heading

The phrase appears as the heading for Part Five, directly before its epigraphs. Its wording shifts the familiar idea of letting someone in: “slip” suggests passage that is quiet or unobtrusive, while “the right one” makes entry a matter of choice. The heading establishes invitation as a charged image without, by itself, specifying who is entering or what the invitation will cost.

The Epigraphs

The section first presents a line from bob hund’s “Struggling Against the Current”: “These days this is my only chance to say my piece…” The ellipsis leaves the thought open, making the fragment feel like a limited opportunity to speak. The next epigraph names Morrissey’s “Let the Right One Slip In” and gives the lyric: “Let the right one in Let the old dreams die Let the wrong ones go They cannot do What you want them to do”.

Desire and Limits

The lyric’s invitation is paired with relinquishment: old dreams must die, and wrong ones must be let go. Its final lines resist the notion that wanting can control another’s actions. Set beside the Part Five heading, the song phrase therefore carries a productive tension: entry is imagined as something one can permit, but desire cannot guarantee that another will become what one wants. The expression brings invitation and its limits together without resolving them into a single, literal meaning.