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"...I want to go up to them and say Stop,  

don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,  

he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things

you cannot imagine you would ever do,  

you are going to do bad things to children,

you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,

you are going to want to die. I want to go

up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,

her hungry pretty face turning to me,  

her pitiful beautiful untouched body,

his arrogant handsome face turning to me,  

his pitiful beautiful untouched body,  

but I don’t do it. I want to live. I   

take them up like the male and female  

paper dolls and bang them together  

at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to  

strike sparks from them, I say

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it."

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-Sharon Olds, "I Go Back to May 1937"  (excerpt)

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