Free Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds Page A

girls,
    of fabrics and the woman I sing. My husband
    had said he was probably going to leave me—not
    for sure, but likely, maybe—and no, it did not
    have to do with her. O satin, O
    sateen, O velvet, O fucking velveeta—
    the day of the doctors’ dress-up dance,
    the annual folderol, the lace,
    the net, he said it would be hard for her
    to see me there, dancing with him,
    would I mind not going. And since I’d been
    for thirty years enarming him,
    I enarmed him further—
Arma,
Virumque,
    sackcloth, ashen embroidery! As he
    put on his tux, I saw his slight
    smirk into the mirror, as he did his bow tie,
    but after more than three decades, you have some
    affection for each other’s little faults,
    and it suited me to cherish the belief
    no meanness could happen between us. Fifty-
    fifty we had made the marriage,
    fifty-fifty its demise. And when he came
    home and shed his skin, Reader,
    I slept with him, thinking it meant
    he was back, his body was speaking for him,
    and as it spoke, its familiar sang
    from the floor, the old-boy tie. O silk,
    O slub, O cocoon stolen. It is something
    our species does, isn’t it,
    we take what we can. Or else there’d be grubs
    who kept people, in rooms, to produce
    placentas for the larvae’s use, there would be
    a cow who would draw from our wombs our unborn
    offspring, to make of them shoes for a calf.
    O bunny-pajamas of children! Love
    where loved. O babies’ flannel sleeper
    with a slice of cherry pie on it.
    Love only where loved! O newborn suit
    with a smiling worm over the heart, it is
    forbidden to love where we are not loved.
    Â Â Â Â Gramercy
    The last time we slept together—
    and then I can’t remember when
    it was, I used to be a clock
    of sleeping together, and now it drifts,
    in me, somewhere, the knowledge, in one of those
    washes on maps of deserts, those spacious
    wastes—the last time, he paused,
    at some rest stop, some interval
    between the unrollings, he put his palm
    on my back, between the shoulder blades.
    It was as if he were suing for peace,
    asking if this could be over—maybe not
    just this time, but over. He was solid
    within me, suing for peace. And I
    subsided, but then my bright tail
    lolloped again, and I whispered, Just one
    more?, and his indulgent grunt
    seemed, to me, to have pleasure, and even
    affection, in it—and my life, as it
    was incorporated in flesh, was burst with the
    sweet smashes again. And then
    we lay and looked at each other—or I looked
    at him, into his eyes. Maybe that
    was the last time—not knowing
    it was last, not solemn, yet that signal given,
    that hand laid down on my back, not a gauntlet
    but a formal petition for reprieve, a sign for Grant Mercy.
    Â Â Â Â Telling My Mother
    Outside her window, a cypress, under
    the weight of the Pacific wind,
    was bending luxuriously. To tell
    my mother that my husband is leaving me…
    I took her on a walk, taking her fleshless
    hand like a passerine’s claw, I bought her
    a doughnut and a hairnet, I fed her. On the gnarled
    magnolia, in the fog, the blossoms and buds were like
    all the moons in one night—full,
    gibbous, crescent. I’d practiced the speech,
    bringing her up toward the truth slowly,
    preparing her. And the moment I told her,
    she looked at me in shock and dismay.
    But when will I ever see him again?!
    she cried out. I held hands with her,
    and steadied us, joking. Above her spruce, through the
    coastal mist, for a moment, a small,
    dry, sandy, glistering star. Then I
    felt in my whole body, for a second,
    that I have not loved enough—I could almost
    see my husband’s long shape,
    wraithing up. I did not know him,
    I did not work not to lose him, and I lost him,
    and I’ve told my mother. And it’s clear from her harrowed
    sorrowing cheeks and childhood mountain-lake
    eyes that she loves me. So the men are gone,
    and I’m back with Mom. I always feared