Life of the Party

I want to know what it means to survive something. does it just mean I get to keep my body?

If you have a son, how will you love him? She is pacing the living room, while the Thanksgiving Day Parade plays behind her, a montage of inflated cartoon bodies, floating slow down 6th Avenue, smiles painted onto their faces. I consider not responding. I consider explaining that I can love him and not trust him. I consider saying that I won’t love him at all. Just to scare her. Instead, I say, If I am ever murdered, like, body found in a ditch, mouth stuffed with dirt, stocking around my neck, identified by my toenails, please don’t go looking for a guilty woman. ("My Grandmother Asks Why I Don't Trust Men")

The truth is: It is a privilege to have your body looked for.

16. Laughter is not about humor, it is about acknowledging a shared joy. Laughter is about bonding. EXAMPLE: WHEN I HEAR MEN LAUGHING, I DO NOT ENTER THE ROOM. I CRAWL HOME IN THE DARK. ("Mans/Laughter")

What is more teen girl than not being loved, but wanting it so badly that you accept the smallest crumb and call yourself full?

Reader, I cannot promise you will be less afraid when you finish this book, but I hope you will feel more able to name what lives inside you.

Maybe, the only reason we fall in love is to see what we look like to someone else." ("The Lover as a Cult")

Maybe I see myself in the worst of it. Maybe if I can imagine myself in the shallow water, you should too. Maybe I am tired of hearing people talk about the murder of girls like it is both beautiful and out of the ordinary.

I want to write a poem for the women on Long Island who, when I show them the knife I carry in my purse, tell me it’s not big enough, ("Ode to the Women On Long Island")

You must know the width of the knife and how it ruined you, name the organs it kissed.

i hate telling people how it happened. there is a difference between fact & truth. the fact is that she overdosed. the truth is that he killed her.

Sometimes, the writer in me wants to remember just so I can give you a story.

They see us as kids now, but the beatdowns will be different when they don’t. There is a special hatred reserved for women and women alone.

Some things are more a feeling than they are a memory.

Men always want to come inside you so that if they give you a sickness or a baby, you are bound to them forever. People will tell you men don’t like commitment and the first rule is that you shouldn’t believe them. Remember, sickness or a baby. Neither of which they’ll take care of.

No one was expecting me but everyone is relieved I am here. I am dressed perfectly for this weather. I am so glad I chose this outfit. I know exactly how to dance to this music.[...] I can make anyone fall in love with me, as long as they aren’t close by.

Another rule to good storytelling is that no one wants a half-remembered tragedy. You must know the width of the knife and how it ruined you, name the organs it kissed.

what does it mean to have an instinct? does it just mean I was born to avoid a certain breed of death?

I once heard the word 'conversation' described as a progression of exchanges but there is no progress here so maybe I will instead compare this to the bullet drop—the idea that if you shoot a gun & drop a bullet from the same location they will hit the floor at the same time, hundreds of feet apart. ("The Lover as a Dream")

Even the men who laugh their condescending laughs when a teen girl faints at the sight of her favorite pop star, even those men are teen girls, the way they want so badly to be big and important and worshipped by someone.

I wanna be all the girls I've ever loved.

No one wants a half remembered tragedy. You must know the width of the knife and how it ruined you, name the organs it kissed.

WHEN I SAY THAT WE ARE ALL TEEN GIRLS what I mean is that when my grandmother called to ask why I didn’t respond to her letter, all I heard was, Why didn’t you text me back? Why don’t you love me?

What am I, if not yours? What do I do with my hands when they are just hands?

I don't know how to not become the people I bring home.

The language of true crime is coded—it tells us our degree of mourning is contingent on the victim’s story. While students and athletes are often remembered for their accolades and looks, sex workers or women who struggled with addiction are reduced to those identities as a justification for the violence committed against them—if their stories are even covered at all. The truth is: It is a privilege to have your body looked for. True crime, while being a genre that so many women rely on for contorted validation, is, simultaneously, a perpetuator of misogyny, racism, and sexualized violence—all of which is centered around one, beloved, dead girl. It is a genre primarily produced by men. A genre that complicates how we bond over our love for it, often unsure of who identifies with the victim and who identifies with the perpetrator.

The only thing I trust about myself is how good I am with words. I can make anyone fall in love with me, as long as they aren’t close by.

just trying to dance at the party then someone asks you to smile and the blood begins to riot

We have the composite sketch in our pockets. We held it up to our fathers while they slept.

Laughter is not about humor, it is about acknowledging a shared joy. Laughter is about bonding. EXAMPLE: WHEN I HEAR MEN LAUGHING, I DO NOT ENTER THE ROOM. I CRAWL HOME IN THE DARK.