Me And Sylvia
How many women can you fit inside a bell jar?
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Sylvia Plath wrote in a poem about a beautiful woman, laying dead. Wearing a smile of accomplishment as her bare feet seemed to say we’ve come so far but it’s all over now. Two children curled beside her.
An empty pitcher, she called her.
She called the poem The Edge, and six days later, she stepped over it.
Carried milk and bread up the stairs where two babies lay sleeping. Crept downstairs, and quietly stuffed wet towels in the cracks around her kitchen door, turned on the oven and gently laid her head down. Until her pitcher was empty.
I’m standing at the window, watching the wind dance with the weeping birch. Slender branches dipping, rising, twirling like pretty ladies in fluttering lace gowns in some Jane Austen novel dancing with Mr. Darcy while he stands behind me. Angry.
Yelling I don’t know what your problem is and I don’t even need to turn around to see his face red with anger so I don’t. Thinking to myself, I know what my problem is. Mostly that he’s no Mr. Darcy, no kind or loving man.
But why blow on embers, I think, if you don’t want to get burned.
Keeping words to myself, I reach up. Fling wide the window.
Feel the wind on my face, whipping my hair because why shouldn’t I want? Wind or maybe hands to play with my hair but there was no dancing and very little that was playful in that wash the dishes, dry the dishes once upon a time life.
But then, I was no pretty lady in a Jane Austen novel. Just another girl in a bell jar. Listening to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.
For almost fifty years we whispered. Oh, the tragedy, poor lost soul, poor little broken bird. Poor Lady Lazarus, risen up by the strength of her words while her broken little body laid cold in the earth. At least until the letters came out.
He beat her. She didn’t tell. Because she loved him, because he was the father of her babies, because women don’t. Tell. Because we know what people say. Why do you make him crazy, why are you so crazy? Crazy women always making men crazy.
So you know. It’s your own fault. So why tell?
Strangled her on their honeymoon. Beat her forty eight hours before she lost a child. Hunched over paper, pen furiously writing “already your doll grip lets go” in a poem. Weeping, weeping. Her pitcher still and always leaking, leaking.
How long can a pitcher leak?
Before it is empty.
Seven days before she couldn’t bear even one more day, she poured it all out in letters to Dr. Ruth Barnhouse, her therapist turned confidante and friend. Secrets that would not surface for almost half a century. Said he looked right into her eyes. And told her. He wished she was dead. And then she was.
And I can’t help but wonder. If the moon cares.
Or if the moon sees it too often to care.
Grains of sand on pink toenails glitter in the sun as wind plays with my hair. Summer sun warm on my shoulders, arms, eyelids as I turn circles in the sand.
Winding backwards, farther and farther until I’m a small girl, running, laughing, climbing trees, kicking a ball, lost in a book, furiously writing clumsy stories and I don’t know why any little girl should grow up to be an empty pitcher. But I did.
I didn’t know I’d be that woeful woman until I was. And then I wasn’t.
Threw away the ring, threw away all the tomorrows, and the repercussions because I don’t care, can’t care, can’t. And ran. To the water. Where I twirl around, re-spooling the universe with nothing but hope and a bottle of pretty pink nail polish.
Dizzy, I sink to the sand. Wrap arms round my legs and rock. Wondering. What talent have I that I should be here and she is not? What a tragedy of fate, what a shame when I am no Lady Lazarus with words to outlive me. And also. Wondering.
How many women can you fit inside a bell jar?
I am running barefoot in the dark. Running, lost, weeping but there is no sound save for the beating of my heart. And breathing. I remember the breathing. Heavy. Shallow. My feet bounding across earth, across sand and grass.
There is a lion chasing me but I am unafraid and then it is behind me, beside me, under me and I lean in, weep into it’s mane as we run. Giant leaping bounds that cover the earth faster than my small feet can cover until it brings me to the city.
I see a sign and bolt awake. Stand and throw open the window but I can’t see the moon from here so I slip out the door. Sit on the back step. Bare feet on concrete wondering what that sign means. Staring into the night sky hoping for answers.
And then I know what it is. About me and Sylvia. Besides needing another soul to cling to when the storm set in. Is getting lost without having gone anywhere at all.
But I am not entirely sure she was right about empty pitchers.
Or the moon not caring.
“How can you be so many women to so many strange people, oh you strange girl?”
― Sylvia Plath, Unabridged Journals
I am called to answer this...
We are silent and our silence contains multitudes. We are silent because we teach boys pride and we teach girls shame. We're built and trained to carry the impossible burden of our own pain and others' rage and we are denied rage of our own.
There's simply no room for it. So we carry it all. Hot coals and corrosive acid burning us from the inside out, smiling, silent, dying by inches.
Better to run, better to howl at the uncaring moon.
Just tears flowing as I read this... thank you for sharing this. It speaks to the emptiness of a female heart--empty because she pours it all out, unseen and often silenced. Filling herself up again becomes the need--or (so they tell us) to stop pouring out.
But that's not like a woman. A woman's very being exists to pour out. We cannot stop being what we are, and how dare they ask us to? How dare they tell us we make ourselves victims and martyrs? It's only who we are.
And the question then becomes, how can we replenish the constant pouring?
And how can the vessels who receive the outpouring do better?
--The Dark Horse