Sharon Olds
Looking at Them Asleep (ca. 1988)

	When I come home late at night and go in to kiss the children,
	I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,
	her face deep in unconsciousness—so
4	deeply centered she is in her dark self,
	her mouth slightly puffed like one sated but
	slightly pouted like one who hasn’t had enough,
	her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the
8	iris around to face the back of her head,
	the eyeball marble-naked under that
	thick satisfied desiring lid,
	she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion,
12	and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,
	one knee up as if he is climbing
	sharp stairs up into the night,
	and under his thin quivering eyelids you
16	know his eyes are wide open and
	staring and glazed, the blue in them so
	anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his
	mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb
20	and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled
	and pale, his long fingers curved,
	his hand open, and in the center of each hand
	the dry dirty boyish palm
24	resting like a cookie. I look at him in his
	quest, the thin muscles of his arms
	passionate and tense, I look at her with her
	face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,
28	content, content—and I know if I wake her she’ll
	smile and turn her face toward me though
	half asleep and open her eyes and I
	know if I wake him he’ll jerk and say Don’t and sit
32	up and stare about him in blue
	unrecognition, oh my Lord how I
	know these two. When love comes to me and says
	What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.