01c. 1962 ADEach of us has a family tree full of stories inside of us, Dirk thought. Each of us has a story blossoming out of us.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
03c. 1962 ADSylvie wishes the anti-depressants had been around when she was in her early twenties, not only to rescue her from the dark tunnels that came when her brother first got sick, but also to keep her from fucking all those assholes.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
05c. 1962 ADShe wasn’t crying at all. This was what scared him the most. Where had she locked up the things he’d seen her feeling that day when she heard? She wasn’t that big a girl to hold all of it—to hold her brother’s life and his death inside of her. To hold all his long-limbed raging tidal motion and all the loss of that.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
06c. 1962 ADI always wondered what it must be like to lose a twin—if somehow Mary felt it like it was happening to her. If she felt physical pain.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
07c. 1962 ADI was starting to learn how to forget the things that made me sad. It was like a charm you followed step-by-step, collecting and blending the ingredients, placing everything in its proper place. It was the magic of forgetting.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
08c. 1962 ADThey were laughing and their hair was shining like leaves in moonlight, their limbs long as saplings. I thought, Girls are magical at this phase, girls are invincible, nothing can touch them. I didn’t think ‘us’ because I didn’t feel that; I felt other, on the outside, watching them.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
09c. 1962 AD...It felt like they were telling each other secrets. Everything they said felt like that—whispered, tender, full of other meanings, like when you tell someone a dream or talk about your astrological signs as code for all the things you love about each other.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
11c. 1962 ADNightingale"Did I wound you, mutilate. Take away your voice. Did I cut something from you. Leave you locked in silence?This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing, your eyes, your hands, your smile. If I listen closely I can even hear your blood.Was I the one that took that away?Go down to the water where we used to swim. Stand under the sky at dawn when the sky is streaked with blood. Open your mouth and shout our secret to the waves. The ocean will be your voice. You won't have to carry anything alone. Little Sister, my Spring, April. Little nightingale. Sant at the edge of the water. Your voice will come back to you. Maybe. If I am silent.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
13c. 1962 ADBut death is stronger than that and when you cover your eyes you are the one who can't see the dark. The dark still sees you.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
14c. 1962 ADUgster vinyl pumps, Partridge Family records, plastic daisy jewelry, old postcards. . . . It's a magpie Christmas market.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
15c. 1962 ADIt's important to tell your story. It's important to listen.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
16c. 1962 ADIt was like when we were little kids and we played games on the ivy-covered hillside in the backyard. We were warriors and wizards and angels and high elves and that was our reality. If someone said, Isn’t it cute, look at them playing, we would have smiled back, humoring them, but it wasn’t playing. It was transformation. It was our own world. Our own rules.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
17c. 1962 ADUnder the ground seep the toxins of the population that lives above. If you have to, you will eat roots and earthworms. It is always night. Candles burn in lanterns made from tin cans. When it is nighttime up above, you can crawl out, but only for a little while. You feel ashamed of your matted hair, your torn clothes, the dirt on your face. Who would want to speak to you? They are all shiny and pretty. They have parents and house with gardens. What do you have? The earth. Whole handfuls of it. The lizard people with their slit eyes and scaly skin. Your loneliness. Your longing.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
18c. 1962 ADThink about the word destroy. Do you know what it is? De-story. Destroy. Destory. You see. And restore. That's re-story. Do you know that only two things have been proven to help survivors of the Holocaust? Massage is one. Telling their story is another. Being touched and touching. Telling your story is touching. It sets you free.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
19c. 1962 ADYou have to imagine things before you can do them. Stories help us see.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
20c. 1962 ADYou always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another life.) You liked to go to the pound and look at them. You tried to send them messages of comfort. I couldn’t go because I started crying the one time I tried. All those eyes and the barks like sobs.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
21c. 1962 ADPeople worry so much. Just enjoy your body. That you can love. And you're alive.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
23c. 1962 ADThe girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
24c. 1962 ADOnce she was standing by her locker and her puka shells broke and scattered and she made a joke about it but he could tell she was upset. He wanted to buy her some more. He wanted to give her a million strands of little nesting polished shells, and tropical flowers and ice creams and lemonades and a pale blue surfboard to teach her to surf on and anything else she wanted. Instead he let his checkered Vans step on one of the rolling shells and crush it.Francesca Lia Block / quote ↗
