Child Abuse: A Continuous Series Pretend for one moment that you are no longer yourself. Visualize instead that you are a young girl; old enough to know right from wrong yet still young enough to be terrified by the dark shadows in your room. It is a cold winter night and your parents have opt...

Sharon Olds' poem "Late Poem to My Father" exposes the profound effect that childhood trauma can have on someone, even in adulthood. The speaker of the poem invokes sadness and pity in the reader by reflecting on the traumatic childhood of her father, and establishes a cause and effec...