"Beyond harm", un poema de Sharon Olds

A week after my father died

suddenly I understood

his fondness for me was safe—nothing

could touch it. In those last months,

his face would sometimes brighten when I would

enter the room, and his wife said

that once, when he was half asleep,

he smiled when she said my name. He respected

my spunk—when they tied me to the chair, that time,

they were tying up someone he respected, and when

he did not speak, for weeks, I was one of the

beings to whom he was not speaking,

someone with a place in his life. The last

week he even said it, once,

by mistake. I walked into his room, and said “How

are you,” and he said, “I love you

too.” From then on, I had

that word to lose. Right up to the last

moment, I could make some mistake, offend him, and with

one of his old mouths of disgust he could re-

skew my life. I did not think of it,

I was helping to take care of him,

wiping his face and watching him.

But then, a while after he died,

I suddenly thought, with amazement, he will always

love me now, and I laughed—he was dead, dead!