I sometimes think that inside me there is a whole archive of other people's words. They catch on to me - in a cafe, where someone drops a napkin and a fragment of a phrase on the table. In books that I will never finish reading, but still keep. In correspondence, where "how are you?" sounds like a spell against loneliness.

I have a coat - gray, slightly frayed on the sleeves. There is always something in its pockets: a movie ticket, a forgotten note, a crumpled check with someone else's phone number. But most of all there are words. I imagine what this coat would look like if every word was sewn on with thread: phrases from Dovlatov, funny lines from an old TV series, someone's "don't forget to smile tomorrow" or "have you heard this song?".

Sometimes I feel like all these words keep me afloat. Because my own are not always bold. My own often don't sound the way I'd like. And other people's are bright, loud. I hide them inside myself and take them out at the strangest moment. Like this morning: it was raining, I was standing at the bus stop, my fingers were freezing. And suddenly I remembered: "Be like coffee - bitter, hot, needed." I grinned. I wanted to write this phrase down on a piece of paper, but I didn't. Why, if it's already inside me?

Once I tried to rewrite all these words in a notebook. There weren't enough pages. Then I tried to forget them - but they come back on their own. In the voice of a friend who quotes someone I've never read. In the credits of a TV series that I rewatch not for the plot, but for the lines that I can whisper under my breath.

I don't know if other people have this habit - to carry other people's words inside themselves, like a talisman. But I feel warmer with them. Even if they are not always mine, with them I know that I am not one of the void. I am made of letters. Of lines. Of tiny dialogues that I do not always dare to say myself.