By the time I was six months old, she knew something

was wrong with me. I got looks on my face

she had not seen on any child

in the family, or the extended family,

or the neighborhood. My mother took me in

to the pediatrician with the kind hands,

a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:

Hub Long. My mom did not tell him

what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.

It was just these strange looks on my face—

he held me, and conversed with me,

chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother

said, She’s doing it now! Look!

She’s doing it now! and the doctor said,

What your daughter has

is called a sense

of humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me

back to the house where that sense would be tested

and found to be incurable.

`– Sharon Olds, from One Secret Thing. © Random House, Inc., 2009.