Бјанка Бањац

“In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly. Once, after my fourteenth birthday, crouched between the seats of an abandoned school bus in the woods, I filled my life with a line of cocaine. A white letter “I” glowed on the seat’s peeling leather. Inside me the “I” became a switchblade— and something tore. My stomach forced up but it was too late. In minutes, I became more of myself. Which is to say the monstrous part of me got so large, so familiar, I could want it. I could kiss it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I don't much like my life, but for some dumb reason, I want to be alive, because sooner or later, I figure it will work out.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

“In Plain Sight by Stewart Stafford

How can I show the real me?
My voice breaking as I speak,
Parched hope's cracked lips,
Delphic in this solitary chic.

Vitriol cannot reach my shore,
The purge reveals little to hide,
Or does rage fester within me?
A cannibal cheerleader inside.

No father around guiding me,
Burnt by mother's acid divide,
Cataracts of persona non grata,
A transient hat tipped in a lie.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“There’s this place deep inside myself that I’m trying to reach. A calm, quiet place where I don’t exist as a girl with a body that grows too big. A place where I can finally sleep. I’m trying to reach that place, every day I try, and I know there will be a point when I’ll be able to slip through. I know the point, I’ve almost been there, the point when I’m so hungry, I can’t feel it, the point of numbness, of suspension, the window of time when it’s okay to say yes, to let go, to fly. That’s the point I work toward, my own personal hunger point; a point when I feel everything and nothing at all. When all it takes is one more step and I’ll be safe.”
― Jillian Medoff, Hunger Point