lady lazarus
sylvia plath

I have done it again.   
One year in every ten   
I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin   
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,   
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine   
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin   
O my enemy.   
Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?   
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be   
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.   
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.   
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.   
The peanut-crunching crowd   
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.   
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands   
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.   
The first time it happened I was ten.   
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.   
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.   
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.   
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.   
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute   
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.   
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge   
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge   
For a word or a touch   
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.   
So, so, Herr Doktor.   
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,   
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.   
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,   
A wedding ring,   
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer   
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair   
And I eat men like air.

constant hunger is a terrible feeling.

"He said that he also doesn't want to be this way, but the way he explained it is that it's like constantly being hungry, and that he simply cannot control it. There's nothing he can do about it. And I try to understand, cos constant hunger is a terrible feeling." 

And I understood immediately that desperation, the hunger, the irrational rage when put in this corner; I understand it all too well. 

I am underwater, and I am sinking. I feel the pressure pushing, pushing, feel myself growing desperate for a breath. But no matter how much I kick, how hard I swim, how fast or slow I push - I cannot surface. I cannot breathe. The wetness is everywhere, all at once, it permeates every pore and invades every part of me. It soaks into me and chills me to my bone. There's nowhere to go and no way to escape it. It's everywhere, and I'm drowning. 

I understand what she means despite not understanding a thing about their problems. Because I hunger the same. 

Someone patted me affectionately on the head on Thursday, and I held on to that feeling for 4 full days. 2020 Sylvia would have taken offense at being patted on the head. "Like a puppy?", she would have thought. She would have felt indignant, degraded. Instead, I felt my heart fill. I found myself wishing that it would happen again. I still wish. 

I want to feel like a woman. I want to be taken care of. I want to be protected, I want to be fought for, I want to be treasured. And maybe I no longer want to take offense at being patted on the head. Maybe I no longer want to always be the decision maker, to always be the one who is reliable, and efficient, and strong. I want to be soft. I want to be gentle. I want to be calm, and prioritise peace. I want to feel like a woman. 

But how do you become that when nowhere is safe? When no one sees how desperately I want this? When no one treats you with gentleness? 

It is humiliating to admit how starved I have become, how desperate I am to feel loved. To be touched gently, affectionately. To feel treasured, to feel valued, to feel wanted, to feel needed. To feel noticed not for what I represent, not what I provide, not for my function, but to simply be noticed. To be seen. 

Lucky there's no one here to witness my humiliation. 

Lucky no one pities me for how badly I want this. 

Lucky there's no one. But how desperately I wish there was someone. 

Solitude can serve as a refuge, but loneliness resembles a confinement. I tell everyone I treasure my solitude. Truth is, I'm simply lonely. 

Tell me when Mondays stopped becoming something to dread and turned into something to look forward to. Work is all that I have now. 

hello, again.

Hi. I haven't been here in ages. I feel like a rusted tap being cracked open, squeaking, squealing until water pours forth, clean and untouched despite the years of accumulated grime covering every surface. I feel like I've forgotten how to write, and yet fearful of beginning again, not knowing whether or not the tap can be closed at will when I so desire. 

Someone I know took their own life 2 days ago and I've been stuck in a melancholic rut since then, brought back to this space from a desire to revisit memories, trying to recall what it was like to be 25 and feeling like there's no other way out other than ending it all. How ironic that my last post 3 years ago was me asking myself the exact same question. 

What was it like to be 25? I click and scroll and it's right there, words on a page telling me exactly what it was like. And yet for the life of me I cannot seem to feel the same things I felt those years ago. I can't seem to feel as much, or to feel as deeply. Is it age? Is it emotional exhaustion from the vicissitudes of life? Or perhaps time is what's clouding my memory? 

Either way, I sit here facing the reality that I will never unknow what it's like to be 33, soon to be 34, and wrangling with the fact that someone I know, someone with that goofy grin and joyous spirit will be 28 forever. 

Everything I read of myself, all my hopes and desires - they seem so different from the life I have now. They say not to take what you have for granted, to not forget that everything I have now is what I once prayed for. Except, is it really? How do I believe this when all at once, the life I live now is so different from what I once prayed for, yet everything I once wanted? Was it my desires that changed over the years, or merely dissatisfaction with what I have, now that I am living the reality of having it? 

Chronically dissatisfied, and chronically pondering the root of my dissatisfaction. I cannot help but chide my own greed, whilst simultaneously feeling somewhat proud that the vestiges of 25 year old me still remain; always chasing, always wanting more, always seeking to be better, never settling.