Sharon Olds
The Dark Bright Color
When I looked down into the stranger’s face––
we had heard someone break into the house,
we had come downstairs, in our shortie nighties,
my sister first, I behind her,
and found him on his back, in the living room––
when I looked at where his face should be and saw the
fingerpainting, in blood, I learned
something I had not known, I got
an education, I saw inside
the body, I saw the red force,
as if, for an instant or two, I had the
wisdom of an ancient magicry,
or as if I was a surgeon, permitted
to walk right through the skin. My life
turned. And then it turned again, when I
saw he was my father, and I had not
known him. I had lost my loyalty,
my animal recognition, which seemed worse,
to me, than his having broken into
the house, or fallen down some concrete stairs,
walking home from a neighborhood party he’d walked
out of, into the night––seemed worse
than his being a drunkard, which was part of him,
as if he could not help it, and I should have
known him. That is when the color, blood
red, rose to a ruling position
in my life, with the ruler’s power to make
the subject shudder. A month later,
on my own leg and panties, the incarnal
favor, the little scarlet hanky,
which meant I would be able to be a mother.
It was my blood, the local fluid I would
almost always be glad to see––
the Red Sea my father was under,
the glisten on him, another matter.
After the Last Kiss
After we had kissed last, that day,
slight lowering of his now blurred
eyes to my mouth, slight reaching
out of his lips, the physical language saying
Kiss me, and I had leaned down,
down, and because of the hospital tray my
kiss was a line crossing the line
of his kiss in a clear X––after cross-
kissing his beautiful mouth, who is to
say who is the woman, who the
man, here, after he gave up his
testosterone, to slow the cancer, and with
the testosterone I’ve had since
13––the holy stink of me
that year it came in. Before she’d matchmade us
my friend had told me about his mind and
heart, and his story, and said, “and of course
he’s drop-dead gorgeous”––after I’d kissed him
for maybe the last time,
kissed his generous mouth in his almost
death face, and stood, there were others
to hug before I could get to the door, and I
felt that my hugs were a little formal, I was
not fully going out to them or
bringing them fully in to me, I was
holding him safe inside me, I was
brim full of him, not spilling, I
contained him, full term, I got to the
door and opened it and walked into pure winter.
Sharon Olds is the author of Stag’s Leap, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize.