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Satan Says - BY SHARON OLDS I am locked in a little cedar box with a picture of shepherds pasted onto the central panel between carvings. The box stands on curved legs. It has a gold, heart-shaped lock and no key. I am trying to write my way out of the closed box redolent of cedar. Satan comes to me in the locked box and says, I'll get you out. Say My father is a shit. I say my father is a shit and Satan laughs and says, It's opening. Say your mother is a pimp. My mother is a pimp. Something opens and breaks when I say that. My spine uncurls in the cedar box like the pink back of the ballerina pin with a ruby eye, resting beside me on satin in the cedar box. Say shit, say death, say fuck the father, Satan says, down my ear. The pain of the locked past buzzes in the child's box on her bureau, under the terrible round pond eye etched around with roses, where self-loathing gazed at sorrow. Shit. Death. Fuck the father. Something opens. Satan says Don't you feel a lot better? Light seems to break on the delicate edelweiss pin, carved in two colors of wood. I love him too, you know, I say to Satan dark in the locked box. I love them but I'm trying to say what happened to us in the lost past. Of course, he says and smiles, of course. Now say: torture. I see, through blackness soaked in cedar, the edge of a large hinge open. Say: the father's cock, the mother's cunt, says Satan, I'll get you out. The angle of the hinge widens until I see the outlines of the time before I was, when they were locked in the bed. When I say the magic words, Cock, Cunt, Satan softly says, Come out. But the air around the opening is heavy and thick as hot smoke. Come in, he says, and I feel his voice breathing from the opening. The exit is through Satan's mouth. Come in my mouth, he says, you're there already, and the huge hinge begins to close. Oh no, I loved them, too, I brace my body tight in the cedar house. Satan sucks himself out the keyhole. I'm left locked in the box, he seals the heart-shaped lock with the wax of his tongue. It's your coffin now, Satan says. I hardly hear; I am warming my cold hands at the dancer's ruby eye- the fire, the suddenly discovered knowledge of love.

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