Books required silence / concerted activity to tackle.

Books didn’t force anything onto anyone.

People could stop reading a book at any time.

Not stopping—getting the reader to not—in fact, was the challenge facing books.

Facing both writers and readers of.

And even if readers managed to not stop, to read the book about the taboo/trauma, books still, despite operating within silence, still operated within language.

Within that mode through which those inexpressible things (taboos, traumas) would still remain unexpressed.

Or: expressed, but un-communicated.

Attempting to communicate things that, by definition (by the limits of language, by societal law) were incommunicable, then, was the most one could do.

Was still a worthy feat, this attempt to.

This performance of attempting to.

What this performance communicated was: I can’t express this inexpressible thing fully, I know I can’t, but that don’t mean I can’t try.

That you can’t.

The attempt to express the inexpressible was the antidote to the other option: wallowing helplessly in repression, shame, as you grew more alienated, hateful, consumed by suffering, till eventually you became a school shooter or Hitler.

Till your body was left with no choice but to start lashing out, fighting back. Deteriorating. Expressing that which you were neglecting to in words/writing.

Bc the body knows, bro.

The body will feel what you decide, mentally, you’re not gonna.

The body will say what you won’t.

And when the thing you won’t say/write ain’t pretty, best believe how your body lashes out won’t be either—

Going to Little League games posted in the backseat of D’s van that had only backseats, no middle row, so D could hang a right into the passenger slot after ramping up. D and Mama pulling up late to high school b-ball games, the ref taking time so she could whip it along the baseline to the stands. D going Yay. in her robot-voice deadpan. Busting out laughing whenever someone ate shit or did a bad play or got injured. Toggling that joystick with her T-Rex arm arms. No fucks given on a ho bitch. Lmao (*crying*). Homies, baes, teammates coming over for the first time, shook by the difficulty she had keeping food, fluids in her mouth, by the slight scent of Lysol-feces emanating from the supported commode in her room downstairs. But never saying anything. Never articulating their fear. Either scared of her or wanting to treat her like a baby. Either banishing her from their sight or talking down patronizing to her, like they knew more than her. To retain their narratives of themselves as the victimized/oppressed/special ones—