Plath-n-Me

I.
No one would describe either of us as
Carefree
Although I have been called a free spirit
How free can a spirit be, carving ghost laments in her arms like trees
With an icicle
Perfect weapon to cover a crime they say, it melts
And rational people don’t believe in specters
I go to my happy place
Attempt to make a daisy chain, but daisies shouldn’t be chained
Lie in the tall grass
I see my best friend once a year
But in my mind she is forever finding the elusive clover
In Ireland, like a soap commercial
And when I die the picture of her will die alongside me
Women don’t report these things
Not when it happened to me
Or Sylvia Plath
Or Louisa May Alcott
Maya Angelou, your poems recite like prayers
If so many of the women writers I’ve loved could’ve hashtagged me too
What does that tell you?

II.
Now I am afraid of men
Afraid of love
For love is not charity
And I am broken in all these places most fragile, springs corroded
Wires cut and lain to rest in a sock drawer with my most intimates
I wore a thong the other day
I didn’t feel like a whore
Rejoice—I’m coming back to me
I’m coming into my own
I’ve distanced myself from all those years ago
Remember peachy lip gloss evenings
The excitement of first dates
He turned
Was violent
How could a painter be so ugly, with his pallet of cerulean and spice?
And I remember thinking
This can’t be happening, he’s shorter than me

III.
Last summer I took the pilgrimage to Concord
I sobbed in Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House
Because she suffered too
Then kept going
Accompanying me was my first love
The one I pushed away, then came back to
He has never turned me away
But will he someday?
He held me, my adolescent love found again
And the tour guide praised him for our girly trip
“I love literature” he said, “And I knew she’s been
Wanting to come for a long time.”
We went to Boston, Isabella Gardner’s Mansion
In Providence divine
We kissed in the Poe Corner of the Athenaeum
We kissed at Sullivan Ballou’s gravesite
I thought about being his dear wife
I know I’ve got the dear part down
He’s taken me every place beautiful
The Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park
Will always be my favorite photograph
At the Harvard museum we bickered over
Chocolate milk
Then despaired over not being able to find
Sylvia Plath’s Cambridge house in the dark
The memo on my corkboard says, “MAKE NEW MEMORIES”
I will
I am
Or as Plath says
“I am I am I am”
The healing process is a slow wrap
More moss, mud and evergreen than chenille
No, I don’t need a man to heal
Yet sometimes the arms are a welcome distraction
Get me away from me
Get me back to me
The snotty teenager with the black lipstick sneer
Clutching her worn copies of The Bell Jar, The Collected
Poems of Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou’s Poems, and Little Women
Listening to Tori Amos, Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana
Enlightenment
She’s me, oh my
She’s a sugar pie
One day she’ll die
And ascend to the sky above her
She is me
We are she
The collective voiceless
Get your finger off the mute button
RECOVER—
That girl I used to be and still in fact AM?
I love her.