Internal Structure --> "The Daughter Goes to Camp" by Sharon Olds

In the taxi alone, home from the airport,
I could not believe you were gone.
My palm keptcreeping over the smooth plastic
to find your strong meaty little hand and
squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the
noble ribbing of the corduroy,
straight and regular as anything in nature, to
find the slack cool cheek of a
child in the heat of a summer morning—
nothing, nothing, waves of bawling
hitting me in hot flashes like some
change of life, some boiling wave
rising in me toward your body, toward
where it should have been on the seat, your
brow curved like a cereal bowl, your
eyes dark with massed crystals like the
magnified scales of a butterfly's wing, the
delicate feelers of your limp hair,
floods of blood rising in my face as I
tried to reassemble the hot
gritty molecules in the car, to
make you appear like a holograph
on the back seat, pull you out of nothing
as I once did—but you were really gone,
the cab glossy as a slit caul out of
which you had slipped, the air glittering
electric with escape as it does in the room at a birth.

This poem is written in simple narrative structure, which is based on the gradual unfolding of Olds' emotions. First, she is alone in the taxi after dropping her daughter off for camp. Then, she slowly realizes everything that she will miss about her daugher, including her "meaty little hand" and "narrow thigh". She then starts to compare her daughter to other events in life, including her dark eyes like "magnified scales of a butterfly's wing." The image of a butterfly shows the mother's acceptance of the daugher growing up. Also, her leaving compared to "the air glittering electric with escape as it does in the room at birth" shows the mother's want to keep her as a baby, but understanding that she must move on.