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One Night She Hid The Pink Cotton Scarf From Her Raincoat In The Pillowcase When The Nurse Came Around To Lock Up Her Drawers And Closets For The Night. In The Dark She Had Made A Loop And Tried To Pull It Tight Around Her Throat. But Always Just As The Air Stopped Coming And She Felt The Rushing Grow Louder In Her Ears, Her Hands Would Slacken And Let Go, And She Would Lie There Panting For Breath, Cursing The Dumb Instinct In Her Body That Fought To Go On Living

-Sylvia Plath

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One Night She Hid

Sylvia Plath

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One Night She Hid The Pink Cotton Scarf From Her Raincoat In The Pillowcase When The Nurse Came Around To Lock Up Her Drawers And Closets For The Night. In The Dark She Had Made A Loop And Tried To Pull It Tight Around Her Throat. But Always Just As The Air Stopped Coming And She Felt The Rushing Grow Louder In Her Ears, Her Hands Would Slacken And Let Go, And She Would Lie There Panting For Breath, Cursing The Dumb Instinct In Her Body That Fought To Go On Living

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I Wanted To Tell Her That If Only Something Were Wrong With My Body It Would Be Fine, I Would Rather Have Anything Wrong With My Body Than Something Wrong With My Head, But The Idea Seemed So Involved And Wearisome That I Didn’t Say Anything. I Only Burrowed Down Further In The Bed.

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So Much Working, Reading, Thinking, Living To Do! A Lifetime Is Not Long Enough.

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Apparently, The Most Difficult Feat For A Cambridge Male Is To Accept A Woman Not Merely As Feeling, Not Merely As Thinking, But As Managing A Complex, Vital Interweaving Of Both.

Today Is The First Of August. It Is Hot, Steamy And Wet. It Is Raining. I Am Tempted To Write A Poem. But I Remember What It Said On One Rejection Slip: 'after A Heavy Rainfall, Poems Titled 'rain' Pour In From Across The Nation.

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Over Coffee And Orange Juice The Embryonic Suicide Brightens Visibly.

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O Heart, Such Disorganization!

Disorganization

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There Is Nothing Like Puking With Somebody To Make You Into Old Friends.

Funny Best Friend

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I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content. Nothing More Than An Empty House, The Warm Hazy Weariness From A Day Spent Setting Strawberry Runners In The Sun, A Glass Of Cool Sweet Milk, And A Shallow Dish Of Blueberries Bathed In Cream. When One Is So Tired At The End Of A Day One Must Sleep, And At The Next Dawn There Are More Strawberry Runners To Set, And So One Goes On Living, Near The Earth. At Times Like This I'd Call Myself A Fool To Ask For More.

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Is There No Way Out Of The Mind?

What Did My Fingers Do Before They Held Him? What Did My Heart Do, With Its Love?

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I Began To Think Vodka Was My Drink At Last. It Didn’t Taste Like Anything, But It Went Straight Down Into My Stomach Like A Sword Swallowers’ Sword And Made Me Feel Powerful And Godlike.

What Did My Arms Do Before They Held You?

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The Woman Is Perfected. Her Dead Body Wears The Smile Of Accomplishment.

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I Want So Obviously, So Desperately To Be Loved, And To Be Capable Of Love.

Read Widely Of Others' Experiences, Even If It'd Be More Comfortable To Snuggle Back In The Comforting Cotton-wool Of Blissful Ignorance.

I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

What I Hate Is The Thought Of Being Under A Man's Thumb," I Had Told Doctor Nolan. "a Man Doesn't Have A Worry In The World, While I've Got A Baby Hanging Over My Head Like A Big Stick, To Keep Me In Line.

The Constant Struggle In Mature Life, I Think, Is To Accept The Necessity Of Tragedy And Conflict, And Not To Try To Escape To Some Falsely Simple Solution Which Does Not Include These More Somber Complexities.

So Many People Are Shut Up Tight Inside Themselves Like Boxes, Yet They Would Open Up, Unfolding Quite Wonderfully, If Only You Were Interested In Them.

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I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead; I Lift My Lids And All Is Born Again. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.) The Stars Go Waltzing Out In Blue And Red, And Arbitrary Blackness Gallops In: I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead. I Dreamed That You Bewitched Me Into Bed And Sung Me Moon-struck, Kissed Me Quite Insane. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.)

I Find That In A Novel I Can Get More Of Life, Perhaps Not Such Intense Life, But Certainly More Of Life Than In Poetry.

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Wear Your Heart On Your Skin In This Life.

Love Set You Going Like A Fat Gold Watch. The Midwife Slapped Your Footsoles, And Your Bald Cry Took Its Place Among The Elements.

I Must Not Be Selfless: Develop A Sense Of Self. A Solidness That Can't Be Attacked.

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Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

I Started Adding Up All The Things I Couldn't Do.

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Secretly, In Studies And Attics And Schoolrooms All Over America, People Must Be Writing.

Life Was Not To Be Sitting In Hot Amorphic Leisure In My Backyard Idly Writing Or Not Writing, As The Spirit Moved Me. It Was, Instead, Running Madly, In A Crowded Schedule, In A Squirrel Cage Of Busy People. Working, Living, Dancing, Dreaming, Talking, Kissing- Singing, Laughing, Learning.

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I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

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I Said: I Must Remember This, Being Small.

Bright Beads Of Red Are Rising Through The Ink, Hearts-blood Bubbles Smearing Out Into The Black Stream

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To Annihilate The World By Annihilation Of Oneself Is The Deluded Height Of Desperate Egoism.

Oh What A Poet I Will Flay Myself Into.

It Was Sometime In October; She Had Long Ago Lost Track Of All The Days And It Really Didn’t Matter Because One Was Like Another And There Were No Nights To Separate Them Because She Never Slept Any More.

Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

Why Do We Electrocute Men For Murdering An Individual And Then Pin A Purple Heart On Them For Mass Slaughter Of Someone Arbitrarily Labeled “enemy?

The Thing About Writing Is Not To Talk, But To Do It; No Matter How Bad Or Even Mediocre It Is, The Process And Production Is The Thing, Not The Sitting And Theorizing About How One Should Write Ideally, Or How Well One Could Write If One Really Wanted To Or Had The Time.

A Dispassionate White Sun Shone At The Summit Of The Sky. I Wanted To Hone Myself On It Till I Grew Saintly And Thin And Essential As The Blade Of A Knife.

Can A Selfish Egocentric Jealous And Unimaginative Female Write A Damn Thing Worthwhile?

I've Eaten A Bag Of Green Apples. Boarded The Train, There's No Getting Off

Last Year A Friend Went Dark In A Nervous City Alone, The Sea Flashing Against His Glasses, The Sea Sorted Out At Last In His Inner Ear So He Could Leave This World As He'd Entered It Through The Undependable Irrational Influence Of Water. -kevin Jeffery Clark It Was As If What I Wanted To Kill Wasn't In That Skin Or The Thin Blue Pulse That Jumped Under My Thumb, But Somewhere Else, Deeper, More Secret, And A Whole Lot Harder To Get At.

But Life Is Long. And It Is The Long Run That Balances The Short Flare Of Interest And Passion.

Masks Are The Order Of The Day - And The Least I Can Do Is Cultivate The Illusion That I Am Gay, Serene, Not Hollow And Afraid.

Every Day Is Precious And I Feel Infinitely Sad At This Time Melting Away From Me.

The Blood Of Love Welled Up In My Heart With A Slow Pain.

I Need Some Older, Wiser Being To Cry To. I Talk To God, But The Sky Is Empty, And Orion Walks By And Doesn't Speak.

So Learn About Life. Cut Yourself A Big Slice With The Silver Server, A Big Slice Of Pie. Open Your Eyes. Let Life Happen.

I Am So Hungry For A Big Smashing Creative Burgeoning Burdened Love.

I Think The Whole Emphasis In England, In Universities, On Practical Criticism (but Not That So Much As On Historical Criticism, Knowing What Period A Line Comes From) This Is Almost Paralysing. In America, In University, We Read - What? - T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, That Is Where We Began. Shakespeare Flaunted In The Background. I'm Not Sure I Agree With This, But I Think That' For The Young Poet, The Writing Poet, It Is Not Quite So Frightening To Go To University In America As It Is In England, For These Reasons.

There Is Something Demoralizing About Watching Two People Get More And More Crazy About Each Other, Especially When You Are The Only Extra Person In The Room.

I Talk To God But The Sky Is Empty.

I Want To Kill Myself, To Escape From Responsiblity, To Crawl Abjectly Back Into The Womb.

If You Expect Nothing From Anybody, You’re Never Disappointed.

How Many Different Deaths I Can Die?

I'm Never Going To Get Married." "you're Crazy." Buddy Brightened. "you'll Change Your Mind." "no. My Mind's Made Up.

There Is Something Demoralizing About Watching Two People Get More And More Crazy About Each Other, Especially When You Are The Only Extra Person In The Room. It's Like Watching Paris From An Express Caboose Heading In The Opposite Direction--every Second The City Gets Smaller And Smaller, Only You Feel It's Really You Getting Smaller And Smaller And Lonelier And Lonelier, Rushing Away From All Those Lights And Excitement At About A Million Miles An Hour.

I Need Not To Be More With Others, But To Be More & More Deeply, Richly Alone. Recreating Worlds.

Do We Always Grind Through The Present, Doomed To Throw A Gold Haze Of Fond Retrospect Over The Past?

I Love The People,' I Said. 'i Have Room In Me For Love, And For Ever So Many Little Lives.

Sometimes I Nursed Starfish Alive In Jam Jars Of Seawater And Watched Them Grow Back Lost Arms. On This Day, This Awful Birthday Of Otherness, My Rival, Somebody Else, I Flung The Starfish Against A Stone. Let It Perish.

I Love Life. But It Is Hard And I Have So Much, So Very Much To Learn.

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Although, I Admit, I Desire, Occasionally, Some Backtalk From The Mute Sky, I Can't Honestly Complain: A Certain Minor Light May Still Lean Incandescent Out Of Kitchen Table Or Chair As If A Celestial Burning Took Possession Of The Most Obtuse Objects Now And Then --

What Have I Eaten? Lies And Smiles.

Is Anyone Anywhere Happy?

And I A Smiling Woman. I Am Only Thirty. And Like The Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

I Liked Looking On At Other People In Crucial Situations. If There Was A Road Accident Or A Street Fight Or A Baby Pickled In A Laboratory Jar For Me To Look At, I'd Stop And Look So Hard I Never Forgot It.

You Have To Be Able To Make A Real Creative Life For Yourself, Before You Can Expect Anyone Else To Provide One Ready-made For You.

I Had Been Alone More Than I Could Have Been Had I Gone By Myself.

Could Have Been

If I Rest, If I Think Inward, I Go Mad.

People Or Stars Regard Me Sadly, I Disappoint Them.

The Lyric Abstrusities Of Auden Ring Mystically Down The Circular Canals Of My Ear And It Begins To Look Like Snow. The Good Gray Conservative Obliterating Snow. Smoothing (in One White Lacy Euphemism After Another) Out All The Black Bleak Angular Unangelic Nauseous Ugliness Of The Blasted Sterile World: Dry Buds, Shrunken Stone Houses, Dead Vertical Moving People All All All Go Under The Great White Beguiling Wave. And Come Out Transformed. Lose Yourself In A Numb Dumb Snow-daubed Lattice Of Crystal And Come Out Pure With The White Virginal Veneer You Never Had.

I Was My Own Woman. The Next Step Was To Find The Proper Sort Of Man.

Antoine St. Exupery Once Mourned The Loss Of A Man And The Secret Treasures That He Held Inside Him. I Loved Exupery; I Will Read Him Again, And He Will Talk To Me, Not Being Dead, Or Gone. Is That Life After Death — Mind Living On Paper And Flesh Living In Offspring? Maybe. I Do Not Know.

How Can You Be So Many Women To So Many Strange People, Oh You Strange Girl?

I Didn’t Want Any Flowers, I Only Wanted To Lie With My Hands Turned Up And Be Utterly Empty. How Free It Is, You Have No Idea How Free.

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

The Lawn Was White With Doctors

Perfection Is Terrible, It Cannot Have Children.

I Must Say That I Am Not Very Genteel And I Feel That Gentility Has A Stranglehold: The Neatness, The Wonderful Tidiness, Which Is So Evident Everywhere In England Is Perhaps More Dangerous Than It Would Appear On The Surface.

Talking About My Fears To Others Feeds It.

We Walk The Plank With Strangers.

Remember, Remember, This Is Now, And Now, And Now. Live It, Feel It, Cling To It. I Want To Become Acutely Aware Of All I’ve Taken For Granted.

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Charles W. Chesnutt

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