Hey, did she say what she couldn’t say? Read Stephanie L. Harper’s “Things I Cannot Say” to find out. And her stunning new book is available at a substantial discount during the pre-publication order period.
Things I Cannot Say
Even when you are a one-year-old jumping out of your crib
(you have no particular reason for jumping, but you do it,
& the thud you make that’s loud but doesn’t hurt,
wakes your father, the menacing resonance of whose
footsteps approaching your room overwhelms you with terror—
your own heartbeat surging in your head—which you catalogue
into your infant consciousness as a sense of mortal danger
you will run from for the rest of your life, though you have no
language to account for it yet), you already implicitly understand
that your fear is a thing you must never talk about out loud, for
the only way its malaise living in your veins could feel worse,
would be if the words you formulated & ascribed to its being
resulted in its summary negation.
___________________________________For the same, essential reason,
you still hardly believe the amazing…
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O at the Edges 