Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To thrust all that life under your tongue!—
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.
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This poem, it is said, asks the question of Sexton, Plath and suicidal people, 'Why' Now after having read this for the first time the question 'Why did you" comes to mind.
leaving the page of the book carelessly open
profound!!! -
this is one of the only poems I've read about suicide that didn't seem overly dramatic or obnoxious--it's matter-of-fact, and perfectly honest.
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ahh why is it this reminds me of a few writers here? In reading this and knowing what happened to her I want to shed a tear.. Her darkness swallowed her whole
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a pumped up moon! whoa!
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I don't think that there could ever be words enough to express how I Feel about this piece. It's absolutely plastered on my thought like the most sallow wallpaper. I want to overt my eyes, but it's everywhere.
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that is me
this is me at my core, i have loved this poem since my freshman yr in high school
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