That Day 

None of the pain was sharp. The sash 

was pliant, its cotton blunt, like a bandage it held my wrist to the chair. And the fierce 

glazed string of the woven seat 

printed me in deep pink, but I was 

used to that, that matter could mark us 

and its marks dissolve. That day, no one touched me, 

it was a formal day, the nerves lay easy 

in their planched grooves. The hunger grew, but 

quietly, edgeless, a suckling in my stomach 

doubling, it was a calm day

unfolding to its laws. Only the pleasure had been 

sharp-- the tild of the squat bottle 

over their bed, the way the ink 

lowered itself, onto the spread, I had 

felt its midnight, genie shape 

leave my chest, pouring forth, and it was 

India ink, the kind that does not come out, 

I sat attached to the chair like Daphne 

halfway out of the wood, and I read that blot. 

I read it all day, like a Nancy Drew I was 

in-- they had said you won't be fed

till you say you're sorry, I was strangely happy, I would 

never say I was sorry, I had left

that life behind. So it didn't surprise me when she 

came in slowly, holding a bowl that 

held what swayed and steamed, she sat and 

spoon-fed me, in silence, hot 

alphabet soup. Sharp pleasure

of my wing-tip hands hung down beside me

slack as I ate, sharp pleasure of the 

legible school of edible letters flowed 

in, over my taste-buds, B, 

O, F, K, G, 

I mashed the crescent moon of the C, 

caressed the E, reading with my tongue 

that boiled Braille-- and she was almost kneeling to me 

and I wasn't sorry. She was feeding the one 

who wasn't sorry, the way you lay food 

at the foot of an image. I sat there, tied, 

taking in her offering 

and widly reading as I ate, S S F 

T, L W B B P Q

B, she dipped into my mouth the mild 

discordant fuel-- she wanted me to thrive, and decipher. 

-- Sharon Olds