My first conversation with Louise was a total failure. We both thought so.
You have to understand that I was in some essential way a feral creature, with that skittish hideaway instinct that comes from practicing survival. Though technically “homeschooled,” I was basically an autodidact: I’d spent years reading my way through the library. Since early childhood, my father had terrified and beaten me. When, a little older, I started to resist his control, he also deprived me of language, keeping me in my room for days without books. He read my journals and punished me for my thoughts. At nine, I’d started thinning myself compulsively. Then not just eating but talking became so difficult that I often could not answer direct questions. By twelve, I rarely spoke. My adolescence was silence, secret-keeping, desperate longing for a different future without the ability to imagine any future but death, which I expected would come to me young. You can see why I loved Louise’s poetry.
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