We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the <br />Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her one ounce of <br />cottage cheese, praying for the strength not to <br />kill herself. We kneeled over the <br />rubber bodies, gave them baths <br />carefully, scrubbed their little <br />orange hands, wrapped them up tight, <br />said goodnight, never spoke of the <br />woman like a gaping wound <br />weeping on the stairs, the man like a stuck <br />buffalo, baffled, stunned, dragging <br />arrows in his side. As if we had made a <br />pact of silence and safety, we kneeled and <br />dressed those tiny torsos with their elegant <br />belly-buttons and minuscule holes <br />high on the buttock to pee through and all that <br />darkness in their open mouths, so that I <br />have not been able to forgive you for giving your <br />daughter away, letting her go at <br />eight as if you took Molly Ann or <br />Tiny Tears and held her head <br />under the water in the bathinette <br />until no bubbles rose, or threw her <br />dark rosy body on the fire that <br />burned in that house where you and I <br />barely survived, sister, where we <br />swore to be protectors.<br /><br />Sharon Olds<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-pact-4/
