Stay on your path Sylvia Plath
don't fall away like all the others
Don't take all your secrets alone to your watery grave about
lovers and mother
The secrets you keep will keep you in deep like Father and Amy
and brother
And all of the people you meet on the street will reiterate lies
that she uttered
Leave me in peace I cry
In the middle of the night on a slow boat bound for Catalina for no reason
Tiny beads of perspiration dot my forehead
could be mistaken for dew drops if this were photo season
But alas this is a real life - and it's been a real fight just to
stop my mind from committing treason.
Why you ask?
Because she told the townspeople I was crazy, and the lies, they
started to believe them
But anyway - that's all over now
I've moved on, gone scorched earth
And now I'm left wondering where to go from here
To Sonoma where the fires have just left?
South Dakota?
Would standing in front of Mount Rushmore feel like the Great
American homecoming I never had?
Would the magnitude of the scale of the sculpture take the place
of the warm embrace I've never known.
Or should I just be here now
In the kitchen
Bare feet on linoleum
Bored - but not unhappy
Cutting vegetables over boiling water that I will later turn
into stew