“I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest”
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Is anybody still
reading these days? More than one
hundred nights later, we’ve built lives among pages
to keep loneliness at bay.
I am, I am -
reading that is, Plath opening
between my knees.
A constant through the years,
we grow more in step as I get closer to her
last birthday.
My own Mademoiselle summer
escaping memory -
I was supposed to be
having the time of my life.
I remember what it felt like to set
eyes on a future lover in Kips Bay.
And the feeling much
later, of knowing I’d never see him again.
New York: this is the place an arrow shoots from.
If I love him, Plath promises
I’ll love somebody else someday.
I am not ready to lose all the rest.
She danced in these streets,
waltzing home every night
to the Barbizon Hotel.
She was supposed to be having
the time of her life.
I am lying in the grass in Central Park,
miles and miles and miles of it,
6 feet apart, but it feels like so much
farther.
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Is anybody still
reading these days? More than one
hundred nights later, we’ve built lives among pages
to keep loneliness at bay.
I am, I am -
reading that is, Plath opening
between my knees.
A constant through the years,
we grow more in step as I get closer to her
last birthday.
My own Mademoiselle summer
escaping memory -
I was supposed to be
having the time of my life.
I remember what it felt like to set
eyes on a future lover in Kips Bay.
And the feeling much
later, of knowing I’d never see him again.
New York: this is the place an arrow shoots from.
If I love him, Plath promises
I’ll love somebody else someday.
I am not ready to lose all the rest.
She danced in these streets,
waltzing home every night
to the Barbizon Hotel.
She was supposed to be having
the time of her life.
I am lying in the grass in Central Park,
miles and miles and miles of it,
6 feet apart, but it feels like so much
farther.