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Strange, When One Thinks Of All The Other Boys, Infinite Experimental Kisses, Test Tube Infatuations, Crushes, Pseudo-loves. All Through This Physical Separation, Through The Testing And The Trying Of The Others, There Has Been This Peculiar Rapport, Comradeship, Of Us Two So Alike, So Similar, But For Science-boy And Humanities-girl - The Introspection, Self Examination, Biannual Deep Summarizing Conversations, And Then The Platonic Parting.

-Sylvia Plath

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Strange, When One Thinks

Sylvia Plath

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Strange, When One Thinks Of All The Other Boys, Infinite Experimental Kisses, Test Tube Infatuations, Crushes, Pseudo-loves. All Through This Physical Separation, Through The Testing And The Trying Of The Others, There Has Been This Peculiar Rapport, Comradeship, Of Us Two So Alike, So Similar, But For Science-boy And Humanities-girl - The Introspection, Self Examination, Biannual Deep Summarizing Conversations, And Then The Platonic Parting.

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I Wish You’d Find The Exit Out Of My Head.

I Didn’t Want My Picture Taken Because I Was Going To Cry. I Didn’t Know Why I Was Going To Cry, But I Knew That If Anybody Spoke To Me Or Looked At Me Too Closely The Tears Would Fly Out Of My Eyes And The Sobs Would Fly Out Of My Throat And I’d Cry For A Week. I Could Feel The Tears Brimming And Sloshing In Me Like Water In A Glass That Is Unsteady And Too Full.

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And I Sit Here Without Identity: Faceless. My Head Aches.

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I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content.

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You've Only Got So Long To Live.

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

I Tried To Speak In A Cool, Calm Way, But The Zombie Rose Up In My Throat And Choked Me Off.

Compared With Me, A Tree Is Immortal.

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You Ask Me Why I Spend My Life Writing? Do I Find Entertainment? Is It Worthwhile? Above All, Does It Pay? If Not, Then, Is There A Reason?... I Write Only Because There Is A Voice Within Me. That Will Not Be Still.

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Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

I Must Get My Soul Back From You; I Am Killing My Flesh Without It.

I Thought It Sounded Just Like The Sort Of Drug A Man Would Invent. Here Was A Woman In Terrible Pain, Obviously Feeling Every Bit Of It Or She Wouldn't Groan Like That, And She Would Go Straight Home And Start Another Baby, Because The Drug Would Make Her Forget How Bad The Pain Had Been, When All The Time, In Some Secret Part Of Her, That Long, Blind, Doorless And Windowless Corridor Or Pain Was Waiting To Open Up And Shut Her In Again.

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The Door Of The Novel, Like The Door Of The Poem, Also Shuts. But Not So Fast, Nor With Such Manic, Unanswerable Finality.

I Opened The Door And Blinked Out Into The Bright Hall. I Had The Impression It Wasn't Night And It Wasn't Day, But Some Lurid Third Interval That Had Suddenly Slipped Between Them And Would Never End.

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Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

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I’ll Never Speak To God Again.

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I Used To Pray To Recover You.

I Have A Violence In Me That Is Hot As Death-blood.

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I Have Stitched Life Into Me Like A Rare Organ

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I Felt Myself Melting Into The Shadows Like The Negative Of A Person I'd Never Seen Before In My Life.

Everything People Did Seemed So Silly, Because They Only Died In The End.

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I Guess They Call It Suicide, But I'm To Full To Swallow My Pride I Can't Stand Losing You The Police Dying Is An Art, Like Everything Else. I Do It Exceptionally Well.

The Truth Comes To Me. The Truth Loves Me.

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.

But When It Came Right Down To It, The Skin Of My Wrist Looked So White And Defenseless That I Couldn't Do It.

I Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.

I've Got To Have Something. I Want To Stop It All, The Whole Monumental Grotesque Joke, Before It's Too Late. But Writing Poems And Letters Doesn't Seem To Do Much Good.

They Would Grow Old. They Would Forget Me.

Sometimes I Feel So Stupid And Dull And Uncreative That I Am Amazed When People Tell Me Differently.

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.

In Spite Of Everything, I Still Have My Good Old Sense Of Humor.

I Buried My Head Under The Darkness Of The Pillow And Pretended It Was Night. I Couldn't See The Point Of Getting Up. I Had Nothing To Look Forward To.

I Am Inhabited By A Cry. Nightly It Flaps Out Looking, With Its Hooks, For Something To Love.

Don't Let The Wicked City Get You Down.

We Know A Thing By Its Opposite Corollary; Hot By Having Experienced Cold; Good By Having Decided What Is Bad; Love By Hate.

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.

She Stared At Her Reflection In The Glossed Shop Windows As If To Make Sure, Moment By Moment, That She Continued To Exist.

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I Cut You Out Because I Couldn't Stand Being A Passing Fancy.

A Ring Of Gold With The Sun In It? Lies. Lies And A Grief.

The First Time It Happened I Was Ten. It Was An Accident. The Second Time I Meant To Last It Out And Not Come Back At All. I Rocked Shut As A Seashell. They Had To Call And Call And Pick The Worms Off Me Like Sticky Pearls. Dying Is An Art, Like Everything Else. I Do It Exceptionally Well. I Do It So It Feels Like Hell. I Do It So It Feels Real. I Guess You Could Say I've A Call.

…* To Learn That Money Makes Life Smooth In Some Ways, And To Feel How Tight And Threadbare Life Is If You Have Too Little. * To Despise Money, Which Is A Farce, Mere Paper, And To Hate What You Have To Do For It, And Yet To Long To Have It In Order To Be Free From Slaving For It. * To Yearn Toward Art, Music, Ballet And Good Books, And Get Them Only In Tantalizing Snatches.

Love Is The Bone And Sinew Of My Curse.

I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

Talking About My Fears To Others Feeds It.

It Won't Happen Yet, Ellen Mused, Mashing Cooked Carrots For Jill's Lunch. Breakups Seldom Do. It Will Unfold Slowly, One Little Tell-tale Symptom After Another Like Some Awful, Hellish Flower.

The More Hopeless You Were, The Further Away They Hid You.

A Man's World Is Different From A Woman's World And A Man's Emotions Are Different From A Woman's Emotions And Only Marriage Can Bring The Two Different Sets Of Emotions Together Properly.

I Am Not A Historian, But I Find Myself Being More And More Fascinated By History And Now I Find Myself Reading More And More About History. I Am Very Interested In Napoleon, At The Present: I'm Very Interested In Battles, In Wars, In Gallipoli, The First World War And So On, And I Think That As I Age I Am Becoming More And More Historical. I Certainly Wasn't At All In My Early Twenties.

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

I Woke To The Sound Of Rain.

The Frost Makes A Flower, The Dew Makes A Star.

I Hurl My Heart To Halt His Pace.

I Get Into A Rut, Unable To Yank My Mind Out Of It.

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The Sickness Rolled Through Me In Great Waves. After Each Wave It Would Fade Away And Leave Me Limp As A Wet Leaf And Shivering All Over And Then I Would Feel It Rising Up In Me Again, And The Glittering White Torture Chamber Tiles Under My Feet And Over My Head And All Four Sides Closed In And Squeezed Me To Pieces.

If I Was Going To Fall, I Would Hang On To My Small Comforts, At Least, For As Long As I Possibly Could.

I Have Done, This Year, What I Said I Would: Overcome My Fear Of Facing A Blank Page Day After Day, Acknowledging Myself, In My Deepest Emotions, A Writer, Come What May.

Do I Like To Write? Why? About What? Will I Give Up And Say, "living And Feeding A Man's Insatiable Guts And Begetting Children Occupies My Whole Life. Don't Have Time To Write"?

What Is My Life For And What Am I Going To Do With It? I Don't Know And I'm Afraid. I Can Never Read All The Books I Want; I Can Never Be All The People I Want And Live All The Lives I Want.

How Can I Tell Bob That My Happiness Streams From Having Wrenched A Piece Out Of My Life, A Piece Of Hurt And Beauty, And Transformed It To Typewritten Words On Paper? How Can He Know I Am Justifying My Life, My Keen Emotions, My Feeling, By Turning It Into Print?

It Is A Terrible Thing To Be So Open: It Is As If My Heart Put On A Face And Walked Into The World.

There Is A Certain Unique And Strange Delight About Walking Down An Empty Street Alone.

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.

With Me, The Present Is Forever, And Forever Is Always Shifting, Flowing, Melting. This Second Is Life. And When It Is Gone It Is Dead. But You Can't Start Over With Each New Second. You Have To Judge By What Is Dead. It's Like Quicksand... Hopeless From The Start.

Not Easy To State The Change You Made. If I'm Alive Now, I Was Dead, Though, Like A Stone, Unbothered By It.

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

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.

I Must Bridge The Gap Between Adolescent Glitter And Mature Glow.

I Saw Myself Sitting In The Crotch Of This Fig Tree, Starving To Death, Just Because I Couldn't Make Up My Mind Which Of The Figs I Would Choose. I Wanted Each And Every One Of Them, But Choosing One Meant Loosing All The Rest, And, As I Sat There, Unable To Decide, The Figs Began To Wrinkle And Go Black, And, One By One, They Plopped To The Ground At My Feet.

They Had To Call And Call And Pick The Worms Off Me Like Sticky Pearls.

But Writing Poems And Letters Doesn't Seem To Do Much Good.

I Am Learning Peacefulness, Lying By Myself Quietly, As The Light Lies On These White Walls, This Bed, These Hands. I Am Nobody; I Have Nothing To Do With Explosions.

You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

My Worst Habit Is My Fear & My Destructive Rationalizing.

The Moon Has Nothing To Be Sad About, Staring From Her Hood Of Bone. She Is Used To This Sort Of Thing. Her Blacks Crackle And Drag.

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.

I Am Afraid. I Am Not Solid, But Hollow. I Feel Behind My Eyes A Numb, Paralyzed Cavern, A Pit Of Hell, A Mimicking Nothingness.

I Can Never Read All The Books I Want; I Can Never Be All The People I Want And Live All The Lives I Want. I Can Never Train Myself In All The Skills I Want. And Why Do I Want? I Want To Live And Feel All The Shades, Tones And Variations Of Mental And Physical Experience Possible In Life. And I Am Horribly Limited.

Famous Inspirational

I Felt My Lungs Inflate With The Onrush Of Scenery—air, Mountains, Trees, People. I Thought, "this Is What It Is To Be Happy.

If Only A Group Of People Were More Important To Me Than The Idea Of A Novel, I Might Begin A Novel.

It's A Hell Of A Responsibility To Be Yourself. It's Much Easier To Be Somebody Else Or Nobody At All.

I Want, I Think, To Be Omniscient. I Think I Would Like To Call Myself "the Girl Who Wanted To Be God." Yet If I Were Not In This Body Where Would I Be-perhaps I Am Destined To Be Classified And Qualified. But, Oh, I Cry Out Against It.

In This Particular Tub, Two Knees Jut Up Like Icebergs, While Minute Brown Hairs Rise On Arms And Legs In A Fringe Of Kelp; Green Soap Navigates The Tidal Slosh Of Seas Breaking On Legendary Beaches; In Faith We Shall Board Our Imagined Ship And Wildly Sail Among Sacred Islands Of The Mad Till Death Shatters The Fabulous Stars And Makes Us Real.

One Thing, I Try To Be Honest. And What Is Revealed Is Often Rather Hideously Unflattering.

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

Doreen Had Intuition. Everything She Said Was Like A Secret Voice Speaking Straight Out Of My Own Bones.

On The Train: Staring Hypnotized At The Blackness Outside The Window, Feeling The Incomparable Rhythmic Language Of The Wheels, Clacking Out Nursery Rhymes, Summing Up Moments Of The Mind Like The Chant Of A Broken Record: God Is Dead, God Is Dead. Going, Going, Going. And The Pure Bliss Of This, The Erotic Rocking Of The Coach. France Splits Open Like A Ripe Fig In The Mind; We Are Raping The Land, We Are Not Stopping.

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

In A Rabbit-fear I May Hurl Myself Under The Wheels Of The Car Because The Lights Terrify Me, And Under The Dark Blind Death Of Wheels I Will Be Safe. I Am Very Tired, Very Banal, Very Confused. I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight. I Wanted To Walk Until I Dropped And Not Complete The Inevitable Circle Of Coming Home.

I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead; I Lift My Eyes And All Is Born Again.

I Said: I Must Remember This, Being Small.

Why The Hell Are We Conditioned Into The Smooth Strawberry-and-cream Mother-goose-world, Alice-in-wonderland Fable, Only To Be Broken On The Wheel As We Grow Older And Become Aware Of Ourselves As Individuals With A Dull Responsibility In Life?

I Do Not Know Who I Am, Where I Am Going - And I Am The One Who Has To Decide The Answers To These Hideous Questions.

I Am What I Feel And Think And Do.

I Feel Occasionally My Skull Will Crack, Fatigue Is Continuous - I Only Go From Less Exhausted To More Exhausted & Back Again.

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

I Inhabit The Wax Image Of Myself, A Doll's Body. Sickness Begins Here; I Am A Dartboard For Witches.

It Was Like The First Time I Saw A Cadaver. For Weeks Afterward The Cadavers Head, Or What Was Left Of It - Floated Up Behind My Eggs And Bacon At Breakfast And In The Face Of Buddy Willard, Who Was Responsible For My Seeing It In The First Place, And Pretty Soon I Felt As Though I Were Carrying That Cadavers Head Around With Me On A String, Like Some Black, Noseless Balloon Stinking Of Vinegar.

I Think That In Poetry Personal Experience Is Very Important, But Certainly It Shouldn't Be A Kind Of Shut-box And Mirror Looking, Narcissistic Experience. I Believe It Should Be Relevant, And Relevant To The Larger Things, The Bigger Things Such As Hiroshima And Dachau And So On.

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

Now I Am Silent, Hate Up To My Neck, Thick, Thick. I Do Not Speak.

Oh What A Poet I Will Flay Myself Into.

I Love My Rejection Slips. They Show Me I Try.

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

At Twenty I Tried To Die And Get Back, Back, Back To You. I Thought Even The Bones Would Do.

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Constance Baker Motley

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