Pretty words, Sharp hooks, Helium Balloons

You Fit Into Me                                        
Margaret Atwood

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

Sex Without Love
Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each others bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health—just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Hope 

On Valentine’s, a buzz
around the flower bins in the strip mall.
Outside, icy sidewalks, grubby snow.
Young men, mostly, on their lunch-break, hover
over the roses and gerberas.
A woman carries a helium balloon,
exclaiming to her friends, glad
she’s found the right thing.
Down the aisle, an old man
hesitates, gripping his cart
with its scant gleanings of bachelor food:
one-serving canned soups, Doritos,
sliced bread.  He is unshaven,
graceless, dressed like someone
who’s never had much.
In his right hand, askew, a lone
red rose in a cellophane holder
like those ruffs they put around dogs
to keep them away
from their wounds.