Watson Hepler

“I imagine that there are ways in which our bodies never really stop being our mothers' bodies. In the bath, I trace my fingers along the lines of myself like a person following a river to its source. When I laugh like her or when I'm mean like her or when I go cold and distant like her, I can feel her lingering, ready to claim what is hers and has always been hers.”
― Brandon Taylor, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“What do you call a feeling that no longer lives in your body? Do you call it a memory? Do you call it an ex? Do you call it and beg it to come back?”
― Olivia Gatwood, Life of the Party

“My brother once called me a hard person. I think he meant that I am a person who does not forgive. This is true. I find it difficult to forgive people who have done harm to me. I am this way out of necessity, because if I do not remember the harm done to me, then no one will, and the boy that I was will have no one to look out for him.”
― Brandon Taylor, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“You can find the pink mace in thrift stores, lipstick turned to blade, nail polish that changes color when dipped in a drugged drink. A reminder of the rituals we had to keep each other out.

A girl watches the sky go and keeps laughing. The water only knows her body moving.”
― Olivia Gatwood, Life of the Party