One Secret Thing by Sharon Olds

Author:Sharon Olds [Olds, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Poetry
ISBN: 9780307804372
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2008-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

Animal Dress

The night before she went back to college,

she went through my sweater drawer, so when she left she was in

black wool, with maroon creatures

knitted in, an elk branched across her

chest, a lamb on her stomach, a cat,

an ostrich. Eighteen, she was gleaming with a haze

gleam, a shadow of the glisten of her birth

when she had taken off my body—that thick coat, cast

off after a journey. In the elevator

door window, I could see her half-profile—

strong curves of her face, like the harvest

moon, and when she pressed 1,

she set. Hum and creak of her descent,

the backstage cranking of the solar system,

the lighted car sank like a contained

calm world. Eighteen years

I had been a mother! In a way now I was past it—

resting, watching our girl bloom.

And then she was on the train, in her dress

like a zodiac, her body covered with

the animals that carried us in their

bodies for a thousand centuries

of sex and death, until flesh knew itself, and spoke.

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