amorette

Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next to their dead fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses of the tribes …

Harold Feldman, “Children of the Desert” 
Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958

It was only important 
to smile and hold still, 
to lie down beside him 
and to rest awhile, 
to be folded up together 
as if we were silk, 
to sink from the eyes of mother 
and not to talk. 
The black room took us 
like a cave or a mouth 
or an indoor belly. 
I held my breath 
and daddy was there, 
his thumbs, his fat skull, 
his teeth, his hair growing 
like a field or a shawl. 
I lay by the moss 
of his skin until 
it grew strange. My sisters 
will never know that I fall 
out of myself and pretend 
that Allah will not see 
how I hold my daddy 
like an old stone tree.

— Anne Sexton