Sharon Olds

True Love

In the middle of the night, when we get up
   after making love, we look at each other in
   complete friendship, we know so fully
   what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
   like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
   bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
   we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
   hardly walk, I hobble through the granular
   shadowless air, I know where you are
   with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
   with huge invisible threads, our sexes
   muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
   body a sex—surely this
   is the most blessed time of my life,
   our children asleep in their beds, each fate
   like a vein of abiding mineral
   not discovered yet. I sit
   on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
   I open the window and snow has fallen in a
   steep drift, against the pane, I
   look up, into it,
   a wall of cold crystals, silent
   and glistening, I quietly call to you
   and you come and hold my hand and I say
   I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
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