“And here was America, neon lit and dusty. And here are my social anxieties.”—Ariel gore
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they’ll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
–The applicant, Sylvia plath
“We enter this evening as we enter a quartet
Listening again for its particular note
The interval where all seems possible,
Order within time when action is suspended
And we are pure in heart, perfect in will.
We enter the evening whole and well-defended
But at the quick of self, intense detachment
That is a point of burning far from passion––
And this, we know, is what we always meant
And even love must learn it in some fashion,
To move like formal music through the heart,
To be achieved like some high difficult art.
We enter the evening as we enter a quartet
Listening again for its particular note
Which is your note perhaps, your special gift,
A detached joy that flowers and makes bloom
The longest silence in the silent room––
And there would be no music if you left.”
–Evening Music, May Sarton
“What is in your heart? You glow.”
–May Sarton
I spent a year begging God for reality and this has all been a giant defense to vulnerability. it’s always the same poem:
I’m hurting.
09/14/2018
“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”
–Audre Lorde
What you want you can’t have
It is easier to ask them to hate me than to risk having someone love me. It is easier to be abandoned; the thing I am used to, molded from, stay inside, than to risk coming out of that shell and be handed love. What do I do with this? How do I run? I don’t know the ways I have let myself be loved, but they are only recent. They are only few.
It is uncomfortable in the light, being held. It is my great terror. Love is my great terrorist.
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