#plath
reading plath,
i wondered —
must every poem
bleed from a broken heart?
or do some verses bloom
for the bright and the unbroken —
for flowers that know
they will wither or be plucked,
yet still sing softly
of the sun that once held them,
and the wind that called their name
Oct 10, 2025
Oct 10, 2025 at 7:19 AM UTC
8th grade I read you—
suicidal Plath—
in front of my class.
"Edge" was the poem.
"Lady Lazarus" would've fit you better.
Funny, how when you unraveled,
blonde hair, hazel-eye, stripes on your thighs,
I heard the same cry and turned away, because
I hated the color red.
Clinical depression,
what a joke.
Pills, razors, approaching finale.
And I, merciless beast, ignorer of tears
covered my eyes.
Ignorance is ****
it's real warm,
and hey,
You gave me a bracelet last year
(I've given you nothing.)
Don't die on me now, okay?
Jul 26, 2025
Jul 26, 2025 at 12:37 PM UTC
They say I am like her,
and her,
but that is
blasphemous,
backhanded as
my sorrow must
bleed through.
Cannot make it
pretty,
there is no way
to make it
tender.
Cannot wish it into
a petal, a leaf,
there is no way
to warm the
sun.
They say I am like her,
but she is in
the dirt buried by
her own
hands-
and her hands
too!
She cried straight
into the
crypt.
Diagnosed with
the
disease of
death.
Do they also say
they hope
I end
like her,
or her,
too?
Sep 21, 2024
Sep 21, 2024 at 1:44 PM UTC
Perhaps the best of me is behind beyond
that point of irreversibility a beacon
of inevitability and it serves as such
I am no longer shiny or shocking or new
a brown paper bag crumpled and creased
milk that sours and curdles a homesick orphan
a lamb on its back and I will always be a child
I will always be a child I will always be a child
Love contorts me I curve and twist
and grow larger and wider
I am a flesh ball a blush balloon
punctured by a mere prick I am sensitive
tuned too tight like my Grandmother’s piano
but it was the first I ever played so no other sounds right
and I tell my first love the same thing
I am entropy the blaze of a sun a deity of delusion
a fickle fig (pick, peel, devour)
I am a tear in your jeans a loose thread a love-sick sack
a daughter (and some days, a mother)
I am tin teeth a blade in your belly a hive in your head
a feeble fawn (a black bull)
I am an amalgamation of deficiency and divinity
coarse and common as coal I am the sun the nether
the shade under the rock I am nothing nothing at all
May 10, 2024
May 10, 2024 at 7:18 PM UTC
~
*She stands on the roof of the world, a ship in a bottle. She likes to wave at passing boats, inviting 120 volts to raise their sails.
Words unbosomed -- her attempt of blotting out the sun and those bloodletting habits.
Her eyelids say, "Only the disquieting muses have time for me." So she writes like an umbrella, shading reality; remembering pluck and luck stories about bumblebees, lovingly wrapped in Tiffany-blue ribbon and paper.
Father used to solve her every contemplation. Now indecisiveness in what she asks. Now indecisiveness in arbitrary tasks.
And she and her negative capability are the last two awake at a slumber party, giving commonplace words the allure of secrecy.
You see, she is only harmless when she sleeps.*
~
Dec 9, 2023
Dec 9, 2023 at 7:49 PM UTC
These days I’ve been looking to the past, to all the women before me. The revolutionaries whose words helped shape the way I see the world; the way I see nature; the way I see simple, ordinary pleasures of life become extraordinary.
These days I let my pen flow freely across the page. I look to all the women before me for guidance because I find myself afraid to speak my own truth. They teach me with words how to live presently, never looking back because there’s no room for mistakes to reside here.
These days we’re on a first name basis. With wide-eyed clarity, all the women before me allow a short glimpse of them as they once were: bright young things full of hope with a cigarette loosely balanced between faded red lips and hands that move deftly over a typewriter. The room is filled with cigarette smoke and incense. I can almost smell it now but the vision is gone with the wind.
These days I seek out: Zelda; Sylvia; Anne; Emily; Joan; Virginia. To all the women before me, I have found you. They’re no longer a black and white still photograph or a short film reel. In those moments, they stay forever young etched in time from decades ago.
These days I welcome you all in my waking dreams. To all the women before me, you are not lingering ghosts being passed by unseen. You are not remembered for how you left this earth but for how, after all this time, you still remain unchanging.
Oct 24, 2023
Oct 24, 2023 at 10:50 AM UTC
i feel like sylvia plath,
or james dean when he said
“live fast, die young, and
leave behind a beautiful corpse.”
except he didn’t say that.
but sylvia plath was volatile
to her mind
and a tortured soul.
the carbon monoxide
filled her soul,
just as the misery fills mine.
the burning desire to exit,
to end it.
the desire to burn the
fires inside my mind.
the poetic way of james dean,
and sylvia plath
lives in my veins
and feels like a raging fire
that cannot be tamed.
Apr 24, 2022
Apr 24, 2022 at 10:45 AM UTC
In response to Edge by Sylvia Plath
"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."
-Edge by Sylvia Plath
The night drips on and on
As they all just watch.
Wonder what got her so far-
What's got her in knots.
This is how they wanted her,
No denying that now.
Perfection in her silence,
Her last breath,
Her broken vow.
The moon has nothing to be sad about.
She looks down on her with apathy,
Just another face in the crowd-
They watch her as she scorches it
All to the ground.
Her body a vessel for pain and for persons,
Her mind gone numb from being treated so worthless.
The moon-
Having seen this all before,
Illuminates the horror within that small home
Staring from her hood of bone.
Although not new,
It is still tragic-
To see such a woman drained of all her magic.
To have once brought life,
The same that she has taken,
And now on her kitchen floor they all lie
Naked.
The moon just sends them back
To the roots of being- for
She is used to this sort of thing.
Life here on earth feels particularly brutal,
Like there is no escape
And to dream of such would be futile.
Don’t let it get you down,
For it is truly just womanhood,
You belong to the silence-
To the frowns.
So tightly sew that pretty mouth shut,
Sworn to be either dead or gagged-
Her blacks crackle and drag.
Apr 4, 2022
Apr 4, 2022 at 12:33 AM UTC
I am tired, and I am tired of making it beautiful. Petals flung over the edge do not soften the fall. Adjectives do not halt decay. Spinning corpses in sugar is a sticky, pointless ordeal. If I let the moonlight paint me in all her violet shades they begin to look more like bruises. A single star, a gunshot wound. I think about how small I must look from all the way up there. I think about how I won’t live past twenty.
It’s such a dramatic scene, a fanciful notion ripped from the history books by a girl who doesn't know how she’ll fit into them. There was one like her before, who dug her palms into the rails and stared out at her burning Versailles, and she wondered how it could be so cold when there was so much light. Another kisses her daughter and son’s shining cheeks goodnight, sits on the tiled floor of the kitchen with her head in the oven. There was the one who painted and broke, loved and broke, painted and loved and shattered and broke. The other flies all her life and goes down at Howland, sinks for its remainder. All of them, statues with shards of rose colored glass transfixed in their eyeball sockets.
Maybe we were made to be romantic and lovely and tragic. Maybe we have no choice but to carry these diamonds and bleed from the backs of our ankles, streak the pavement rose red. Maybe we were destined to scar everything we touch, for what is beauty without pain?
I’ll paint my nails and bite them to the beds, I’ll **** boys who are cruel by design. I’ll spin endless corpses, spin relentless circles in this frigid corner of mine.
Jan 10, 2022
Jan 10, 2022 at 2:22 PM UTC
The first thing I see
when I pull out the top drawer
was the diagnosis. Meds, there you go
it pretty much said that.
I wondered about all the
creative people doing
some remarkable things,
creating and being alive.
Except they all one day
killed themselves.
Van Gogh stood in
the overgrown field before
he shot himself.
Sylvia Plath knelt down
and stuck her head in the oven.
Virginia Woolf grazed the smooth
peebles, thinking about what
she would write about those peebles,
Only to shove them in
her pockets and drown in the Ouse river.
Nearly everyday, I tell myself
I want to be a writer, or an artist-
Both, actually. That’s all I ever
wanted to be, but the fear of
spiraling, and becoming them
Is deeply disturbing.
Yet, I craved for this life,
To paint, and create stories
with a dash of madness
They all did likewise.
Mar 31, 2021
Mar 31, 2021 at 3:04 PM UTC
Each dull wheeze
— half-glass-filling lungs, tarred —
records my moments
like reel-to-reel tape
And the heart is a quivering branch
If not a paperweight
Pinning will and testament to the
desk
That plastic wine “glass”
turned out
to be
glass after all
My woman throws me punches
with the gentle touch
— all the virility —
of a little, lonely, old man
feeding bread
to ducks
Then goes to work on the meat of her hand
with the glass
Damages the nerves in her thumb
tussle ensues
My arms are covered in blood
That two-penny copper smell
sister’s fella has anger issues
and wants a straightener
Tells me I need a job —
Is this not work?
If I had Molly’s blessing
I’d go to work on this son of a *****
But she’s crying
And begs me not to
Begs him to calm down
I wanted to widow her
Her
And my bleeding wife
Jan 17, 2021
Jan 17, 2021 at 9:29 AM UTC
It is day one
and I am alone in a hollow shell
with you,
in the dark
and our breathing turns
into short bursts of longing.
I let my fingers trace the god I found
shaped like you
and our eyes meet in the heavy darkness
along with our hands, arms, legs, and lips
I slip into the hollow shell we made
with twists and curves like a nautilus-
your sheets are the ocean tossed gently around us
loving
is an art, and I do it well
to the point where
I do not want to live tomorrow.
But it is day two
and I am dead without you
Dec 29, 2020
Dec 29, 2020 at 4:14 AM UTC
There are nights when I run out of flesh,
of skin and bones
to melt,
to offer,
to fill this glaring pit,
now just a rusting can of worms
There are nights when my soul wraps itself
in silken ribbons and velvet gowns
slipping slowly off this skin:
a striptease for death;
maybe more.
There are nights when my soul
waits,
stills in a corner
and readies itself for Plath to collect.
Get it all out now —
the linen is too short,
the myrrh, too little
for the allusions and all these twisted laments.
This wake is good for just one tragedy.
Get it all out —
the obvious references,
the tributes to another poet,
who killed herself —
get it all out, little girl.
There is no room for two in a coffin
in a world where
Lady Lazarus dies and stays dead.
Jul 23, 2020
Jul 23, 2020 at 11:00 PM UTC
i wanna dive head first
into a map of the night skies
trapped inside our four-walled room;
maybe this is where black holes go to die
and they can all stare back at me —
swallowing a chaos of sobs
and a chaos of all your favorite songs;
regardless, i’ll dive into the night skies,
or what it used to be
and name these stars – the ones that remain anyway,
after you.
after me.
after us;
at least they take a long time to die –
long enough for flowers to droop and fall apart
on weeds and lonely epitaphs.
and dear, i hope heaven is holding you closer than i could ever had;
tell me, did you, like sylvia
write suicide notes and call them poetry?
and god do i hope that heaven is holding you so close,
you forget all of the world’s sadness
you once took for your own.
out here, the calendula falls and
my eyes mourn over petal-covered graves
poems cannot hope to beautify.
Jul 9, 2020
Jul 9, 2020 at 7:59 PM UTC
I am Sylvia Plath and decide to commit a suicide
Before night, before midnight, before any incident spoils my intention that goes totally upward, or any single communication proves it is life: generally moves on haphazard, neither do I want be introduced as a horrible criminal never been merciful to grandiose thought in keeping self magnified or words very elegance. Away… don’t look at me in this way since reality is so horrified, since I’m a goddess with only one eye lying beside the lake and playing with water flowing on the line of the green jungle what we call it life to shot the fingers on heavenly drops and sing the song of eternity to confess: I’m not as honest as other gods attached to the mirror of the wall with four eyes to reflect the realities of people of come and go, creating flickering and shaking atmosphere over my sights that makes me semi- blind when three other eyes remaining behind the mirror and one eye -goddess is not trustworthy enough in exposing the murmurings of the woman reposing on river side in pledge of tuning the song of solitude with silent outcry:
La La La *** La La La *** La La La ***
My Love:
How creative you are, not cruel at all, just very creative in exploring the long distance between doves of love and very cunning in employing people to excavate a chasm of agony, torturer and blood between you and I… I’ me Sylvia Plath and decide to commit a suicide, before maroon crimson night, before children know what their mother really decide, before horrible fish rises abruptly inward to devour my heart or demolish all my beauties of ladylike in shadow of your last statement warned me “ for what you are still in dark?”
Dark! What a brilliant statement in the first and last and lost time, on duration of nights insomnia or feeling nausea when autumnal rain attacked the yellow red leaves to fall to forecast that unity is so far. When nights’ owl very kindly repeats your heart dark…dark…when the mirror broken, eyes spatter on all over the world, god and goddess remain eye less, completely blind, and our last reminder…your last medal on my heart still dark.
I am Sylvia Plath and decide to commit a suicide.
Jun 14, 2020
Jun 14, 2020 at 4:02 AM UTC
Sylvia didn't waste time
She kept time
In a bell jar
On her nightstand
Next to the blissfully whirling blackness of eternal oblivion
All in the hopes it might one day grow wings
And lift her beyond the owl's talons clenching her heart
May 2, 2020
May 2, 2020 at 2:20 PM UTC
I do not know her name
For she said she did not have one
I know not where she come
For she said she was from nowhere
I met Her at the carnival
she was at the Funhouse
her clothes did not match
And her tangled golden hair reached her waist
what caught my attention was the balloon
A color I’d never seen before
Drawn in, I followed her inside
She was humming
She carried herself as a traveler
passing through each moment
Even as we were going up steps,
It felt as though we were getting deeper
The lights were dimming
The noise was fading
It was me and her
We entered the hall of mirrors
when she began to laugh
Reaching painful tones
Her balloon popped
And with a smile on her face
She turned around
She looked at me with her empty sockets
And said, “Is it not funny to you?
Mirrors all around me
And I still can not see who I am!”
Apr 15, 2020
Apr 15, 2020 at 12:05 AM UTC
Have you ever heard the sound of nothing?
A desolating sunbeam hitting the ground
Each individual on the hunt for something
Yet, nothing can be found.
The trees feel lonely,
They meet the sky for a chat.
They beg for money,
But the sky gets nothing back.
Together, the world turns grey.
The smell of death starts to cover the streets
While they all stand and wait
We just stay inside and try to fall asleep.
Apr 12, 2020
Apr 12, 2020 at 6:57 PM UTC
Zodiac signs have failed to tell
of an epoch of limerence waiting ahead
neither could a compass navigate
a homesick constellation to its rightful cell
and yet I travel, swim, and tread
on a glimpse of you
on a foreign thread
on a beacon of fury to accommodate
Epiphany emerged
the world’s ablaze
mnemonic particles floated again
Astral projection took its toll
your skin reached out and took the fall
I oft hear sounds; my sonorous wails
my sword-of-a-body
and my serrated edges
drove them away
but there you were
a scabbard of steel
to engulf and congeal
to hold and to heal
Alpha Cephei has got nothing on you
you became the star that ruled the Earth
the right hand of the northern pole
the right hand I chant my paean for
you were 49 light years away
until you adhered to my directions
My roots will cease to loosen their grip
on your light rays and elysian touch
on what I crave, yearn, and long
for you are the home that got me stuck
and you are the space where I belong
Mar 13, 2020
Mar 13, 2020 at 4:09 PM UTC
how wonderful is the essence of childhood innocence and naivety?
children who question even the simplest daily tasks you complete so many times you’ve lost count make you wonder what it was like to complete the task for the first time.
how wonderful is the simplicity in thinking, the yearning for knowledge that is yet to be obtained?
the question as to why you drink coffee instead of a babyccino or wine over juice allows for our true motives to be exposed; for we do not always consciously choose coffee over babyccino. the idea, to an average adult, would be absurd!
‘me, an adult, drinking a babyccino? how childish.’
but why wouldn’t you choose babyccino over coffee? coffee makes grown ups shake and trip over their words, eyelids jammed open exposing their bloodshot soul.
do we choose coffee for fear we’d be perceived as childlike if we’d have chosen babyccino? what is so terrifying about the ideology of childhood? why do we crave growing up so badly and with such haste? what is so shameful about the questioning of existence and looking knowledge in the eye, desperate to have the last word?
why don’t we choose juice over wine? is the taste of sweet comfort too overbearing for your tongue? does the colour of orange juice remind you of wednesday mornings when you come downstairs, keen to work with jellybeans in maths as your teacher had promised you the day before? or maybe the coloured counters which had been stored away for a while because a classmate was caught trying to eat one.
the truth is, wine is bitter. no matter how refined your taste might be, there is an undeniable bitterness in wine which adults love to ponder, the same way they love to ponder over pessimistic news stories that are equally as bitter. they discuss the wine, using pretentious words to describe the undertones and how sensual it tastes, refusing to acknowledge the overt bitterness they are so eager to gobble up when they return to sobriety.
‘it’s too sweet,’ they’d shake their heads at the palm which offers apple juice, while eagerly smiling and nodding at the dark, tinted glass which induces headaches.
how about the brittle roll of grey, tossed on our doorstep every morning? the one you ask me to fetch you in the youth of the day, when sparkling sun-rays dance on my face? what do you make of the fine print that tells you what is occurring on the side of the world submersed in slumber while you’re in your wake?
what do you make of the numbers that tell you it’s warm outside?
why not feel the warmth from the orange orb above yourself?
why not dance under the small droplets of the ‘mist’ setting on your hose?
and why do we lose ourselves to the pursuit of validation, to the judging eyes of the streetwalkers which our eyes never lasted more than a second on when we were younger?
i now write as someone who is tired, ability to think in a childlike manner worn down heavily from the constant chafing of dawning adulthood. but i also write in the hope that small moments like these will recur, like clouds in the sky clearing momentarily for the sun to smile at me.
though looking up i’m often met with a vast, grey face, i shall continue to smile at the silver wrinkles, engraved by years of laughter and juvenile innocence.
Mar 2, 2020
Mar 2, 2020 at 8:11 PM UTC
If a ship is replaced piece by piece, part by part,
It will eventually become an entirely new ship.
Not a shred of the old one will remain,
Except in memory.
I have tried to die a thousand times.
I think I’ve killed a piece of myself in each attempt.
In theory, if I **** and rebuild myself piece by piece, part by part
Eventually the “me” that is left will be entirely new.
Sylvia Plath once said, “Dying is an art”;
I wonder if I’m finally an artist.
Feb 4, 2020
Feb 4, 2020 at 2:00 PM UTC