Bad Cree Quotes

“That might be the worst thing about death: it doesn't stop anything. The world keeps moving, even though the pain is just as real as the day it settled in.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“I worry that this place, the solitude of my life in this apartment, in this city, has turned my memories monstrous. That loneliness can make once-beautiful things terrifying.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“It feels bad to be loved this much when you don't think you deserve it.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“I have so much love I'm sick with it. But there will always be bad living alongside it, etched under my skin. Living with bad doesn't make me bad, though, it's just there like everything else.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“We had her forever and only a minute. She was alive, full, present, and then she shapeshifted into nothing. There was no measure of time that made it make sense.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“There was something about the absence of sound and the acute feeling that I was really, truly alone that left me on edge. Maybe my body wasn't at home in quiet. Maybe it needed the rumble and movement of voices and people.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“On cloudless days I swear the prairies are closer to the sun than anywhere else in the world. Not because of the heat. It's the size of the floating orb when nothing else is around it. Beating like a heart in a blue, blue ocean.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“The only thing worse than the moments after death have got to eb these one: the moments before.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“The worst part about missing someone is when you forget for a second that they're gone. When you remember, the pain hits you harder than before. Forgetting can feel like a gift, but a lot of the time it's just hurt lying in wait.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“How cruel that we can't even hurt in peace, that we have no time to try to heal. We can't even grieve without something coming for us.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“I want this embrace to mean everything between us is forgiven, that the years of heartbreak can be healed. But for all a body can do, it can't dam a river that runs too wide.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“Time seems to slow, memories of places collide with what I see now, like I'm living in the past and the future all at once.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“Sadness is not so far from anger anyways. It's a flip of a switch. A trickle of water diverting from one pool to another”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“One thing they don't tell you about when someone you love dies because of a sickness is that death happens in a million different ways in the lead up to the actual moment.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“We all sit in silence of this realization for a moment: that we've hidden ourselves from the only other people who could understand.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“I think about all these secrets we've all been holding tight to our chests like a bad hand of cards, trying to bluff our way out of losing it all. How did all of these dreams lie between us?”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“It's the bad that has been passed down and passed down and passed down, that weaves itself in the marrow of our bones. A bad inflicted on us, one we have no business carrying. And we're all just coping with it in the ways we know how.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“An Indian dying is like a balsam fir getting chopped down. Trees for mile and miles feel the pain under the soil. They send their reserve nutrients through the root network to the stump, which closes over with bark like a scab. Eventually, the stump turns into a nursery, a home for new growth, for something else to take shape. This isn't the same as healing or being reborn, but it's the closest we'll ever get.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“I know what it's like to be made into something, to not be sure if the hole in me was always there or if it was carved out over the years.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“Wapanewask," she said once, pointing at the ground to a yellow stalk sprouting tiny, white flowers growing in a plume. "Your mom's favorite. Fitting. Yarrow is stubborn, like her. Only grows where it wants, doesn't take orders from anybody.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“Being by the lake is different from being by the ocean. The ocean announces itself, the steady sound of waves letting you know it’s near and ready. By the lake, the noise comes from everything around it. Trees rustling in the wind, birds and bugs chirping. The lake itself, though, stays quiet unless big winds or nearby boats disturb the water into lapping the shore. It watches more than it speaks.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“One thing they don’t tell you about when someone you love dies because of a sickness is that death happens in a million different ways in the lead-up to the actual moment.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“It’s the bad that has been passed down and passed down and passed down, that weaves itself into the marrow of our bones. A bad inflicted on us, one we have no business carrying. But it’s heavy. And we’re all just coping with it in the ways we know how.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“JESSICA JOHNS is a nehiyaw-English-Irish auntie and member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. She is an interdisciplinary artist and award-winning writer.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“The worst part about missing someone is when you forget for a second that they’re gone. When you remember, the pain hits you harder than before. Forgetting can feel like a gift, but a lot of the time it’s just hurt lying in wait.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“Your body carries home just as much as the land.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“But another reason, one deeper than the rest, is so I don't have to feel the guilt anymore. So the regret of closing a door between the living and the dead stops eating at me like it does.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“I wonder what’s worse, living in the deep marrow of grief or pretending the person you’re grieving never existed in the first place.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“How far away from her was I that she could look so small when all my life she had been a mountain?”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree

“She scoffs into the phone. "Our ancestors and spirits hae been speaking to us in a million different ways for thousands of years. You think they would have a hard time figuring out texting?"

I'm silent at the simplicity of the statement. How easy belief in my truth comes to her.”
― Jessica Johns, Bad Cree