Maggie McCormick

“I remember that day very clearly: I had received a phone call. A friend had been in an accident. Perhaps she would not live. She had very little face, and her spine was broken in two places. She had not yet moved; the doctor described her as “a pebble in water.” I walked around Brooklyn and noticed that the faded peri-winkle of the abandoned Mobil gas station on the corner was suddenly blooming. In the baby-shit yellow showers at my gym, where snow sometimes fluttered in through the cracked gated windows, I noticed that the yellow paint was peeling in spots, and a decent, industrial blue was trying to creep in. At the bottom of the swimming pool, I watched the white winter light spangle the cloudy blue and I knew together they made God. When I walked into my friend’s hospital room, her eyes were a piercing, pale blue and the only part of her body that could move. I was scared. So was she. The blue was beating.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“No, Novikovs time traveler is the tragic dupe who realizes too late her |trip to the past is what sealed the very fate she’d meant to prevent. Maybe you mistook your future voice shouting through the walls for something else: a heartbeat pacing and then rapid with want, a purr.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“I suppose it is possible that one day we will meet again and it will feel as if nothing ever happened between us.”
― Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“Your heart launches itself against your rib cage like an animal.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House