I Cannot Say I Did Not Ask by Sharon Olds

I Cannot Say I Did Not Ask

 

I cannot say I did not ask

to be born. I asked with my mother’s beauty,

and her money. I asked with my father’s desire

for his orgasms and for my mother’s money.

I asked with the cradle my sister had grown out of.

I asked with my mother’s longing for a son,

I asked with patriarchy. I asked

with the milk that would well in her breasts, needing to be

drained by a little, living pump.

I asked with my sister’s hand-me-downs, lying

folded. I asked with geometry, with

origami, with swimming, with sewing, with

what my mind would thirst to learn.

Before I existed, I asked, with the love of my

children, to exist, and with the love of their children.

Did I ask with my tiny flat lungs

for a long portion of breaths? Did I ask

with the space in the ground, like a portion of breath,

where my body will rest, when it is motionless,

when its elements move back into the earth?

I asked, with everything I did not

have, to be born. And nowhere in any

of it was there meaning, there was only the asking

for being, and then the being, the turn

taken. I want to say that love

is the meaning, but I think that love may be

the means, what we ask with.