Quotations from *Bloodsong*, 2 of 2
Jill Neimark
American

He never asked my last name. When I asked if he’d ever been in love, he said, Yes, but I loved the wrong person, and he said it as simply as someone would say, Yes, but I took the wrong turn and that’s why I’m late. I wanted to ask the most stupid, obvious question: Why did you choose the wrong person? But instead I asked him how he liked New York, and he said, I’ve been in New York before and I can tell you, New York and I are not in love with each other. I like the desert and the ocean.
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong

On a train to Wyoming. It’s surprising how we’re all alike at least on trains.
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong

I’m twenty-nine and I feel absent from my own life.
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong

I don’t remember—what’s it like to be the most important person to someone? To say, I’ll never get over you. I’ll never recover.
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong

“Every puertorriqueno,” says Popi, “is born split in two. He’s like the yagrumo, the tree whose leaves turn from dark to light in the wind. Every one of us is born with this divided self.”

“Divided between what?” I ask, watching him pour milk into his coffee until it’s the color of butterscotch.

“Latin and Anglo,” he says quickly, as if pleased at my indulgence. “Being part American and always the poor cousin. . .”
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong