Jessica Blank

“It just happens. Even when almost everyone who showed you how to do things showed you wrong, and screwed you up, and left; even when you have promised yourself fifteen different sets of sheets and in freight trains and on sidewalks, staring up at the stars, that you will do it different from all the people who have done it wrong and hurt you, still you do it the same. Still you do the same shit to everybody else that they have done to you. I know it must be possible to keep promises. There must be people who say things and mean then and who can make the words turn real. But I've never met one. I keep trying to be something I'm not even sure exists. I've promised myself so many times that I won't be like so many people, and I still do it anyway. I still make people cry, and laugh at them, and I know as soon as everyone really sees me they'll all leave again and I'll be left with the noise not being able to sleep.”

“It comes out of my mouth like water: the things he said at the beginning, what it's like to know a person's smell, the anxious catch that now has dulled to normal when I hold the pay phone and it rings and rings. How underneath I don't believe he's coming anymore, and I wish I could turn the air beside me into something solid to fill the hole he leaves. How sometimes when he'd touch me I'd go out onto the very edges of myself, far like on a tightrope or a plank, and balance knowing there was only air to catch me; how he'd hold me there till it got scary, sometimes longer, and it was realer and more raw than any thing I'd ever felt. How he would always close his eyes and seem so comfortable, casual even, and I was always amazed at that: how brave he must be for it not to scare him at all. How sometimes it broke me into two pieces, and I'd lie there under him naked and stretched out past my skin, and another me would watch from the ceiling. Even if it was too much I had to grow to hold it, because it belonged to me now, and I belonged to him, and if I let any of the pressure of it spill like water from my faucet mouth, it would all leak out and be gone from me forever. That's what he always said. ”