Бјанка Бањац

“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

“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

“Somebody inside of me has always tried, with all his strength, to be nobody.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“They ask me what I think of food. I tell them I don’t know, but I do. I know everything about it. I feel like I’m at war. It’s all about the battle. I am always aware of what I am doing. I watch myself watch the plate, I watch my hand lift my fork. I watch the mouth that opens like a cunt, the fork that slides in like a dick. That fucks me every time I swallow. I watch every second. I savor it all. The object, however, is to not let them know that you know this. Because if they do, they will take it away. Not the food, of course, but the knowing. Your absolute certainty that you will win. That’s the real war, not the food, but the fuck and the desire of that fuck that I can control and I can deny. That I can destroy. You destroy the hunger, you destroy the desire, you destroy the need, you destroy the girl. The Me. And once I’m gone, what’s left to fuck?”
― Jillian Medoff, Hunger Point