*emboldened italics denote quotes from Gertrude Stein that appear in the book

A sentence has wishes as an event
In seeking privacy, the speaker serves as exclusive witness
To her own first blood, stashing period panties in a Snoopy mask to hold
The secret in suspension, like an unsaid sentence
Which, says Stein, once uttered, turns static; is in a perpetual state of recovering
 'Monster' implies abnormal, is judgment; the unuttered secret can't yet become monstrosity

As a teenager, the speaker overhears teenage boys comment on a girl's labia as a monstrosity
A gynecological exam seeds a secret that becomes the unsaid sentence of the future sexual event
"I look at my body and try to guess the ways it will be mocked": proactive recovering
Why is a sentence duplicated not depreciated? Because it is a witness
Sometimes Stein is most absorbable the moment before the idea is fully seated in the sentence
Cohen writes, "The spoken words of young men concretize the anxiety a woman can feel,": enact a hold

A sentence makes not it told but it hold
A sentence is a vessel, is a body; variation makes a lie of monstrosity
Artist Jamie McCartney created over 400 unique plaster molds of labia, each an unspoken sentence
"Why do I need art to understand my sex parts?": recognition is an event
To stand in the presence of the body, various and undepreciated, is to bear witness
To the project of the self, in all moments recovering

Cohen posits "There's beauty through the disappointment,": on the other side, in the recovering
The quest for intimacy can disappoint, if not aggrieve; the sentence struggles to keep hold
Secrets are a matter of timing; a text can be controlled, be witty; they testify; they witness
"Geniuses of love" populate the speaker's cell, make untenable any notion of monstrosity
Inside the self, the words serve every entity and outcome; once wished outside to the event
Of the secret, It is very hard to save the sentence

This is not a book about Gertrude Stein, but Gertrude Stein haunts this book, each sentence
A sentence [that] needs recovering
Once it has been let loose upon the public air from the event
Of someone's secret. The speaker is advised to cut the Stein stuff, but the book will hold
On to the questions and quarrels that arise from the speaker's reckoning with monstrosity
And genius and identity and creativity and love and sex; it insists on witness

There are mentions of at least three dogs in these essays, each one a wordless witness
Stein says, I am because my little dog knows me: sweet, but to Stein to be identified is to hand creative agency a death sentence                                                                                                                                                                             
Now think carefully of monstrosity
"We must compel ourselves to say the sentences that help each other live above ground"—
and be the geniuses of our recovering
The speaker makes a lyric and compelling argument for courage in love: to hold someone at a distance is not to hold
Them at all, even if trauma, particularly illness, awaits clearly on a future shore; and especially in this event

Monstrosity, then, is that which lives and dies, not without witness,
but absent the event of love. The secret may be served imperfectly by the sentence
but in the unearthing and recovering of Stein's (and the speaker's own and others') wisdom, what is rigid releases its hold