Love. Interpretations. Two

What got me about this piece was the last part. The idea that in the end we are like runners, racing against our own time. I understand that part.

But, who is this poem about? That's where I'm stuck.

Is this about someone with many lovers? Or is this about someone in a monogamous relationship that is without love?

The first time I read it, I thought, yes, we are alone in this universe. It's a powerful and empowering idea. But then I read it again, and I couldn't help but feel sad in the end. There's beauty in making love. There's even beauty when we attempt love and fail.

And the idea that we are alone within a universe full of so many constellations. Hmm.

Sex Without Love
By 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 other's 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 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.