Sylvia

Acts of remembrance. Poems. Birthday letters. A history of a courtship, of a marriage. A history of Death, and of being left. A history, then, of ghosts and shadows. In biographic detail. A spill of words. The echo heard: Sylvia. For she won't be contained on the page, any page. By attempting to explain, to remember her, the flighty part of her escapes. She can be known but she won't be held. She were a whole Antarctic sea; she were pack-ice between this world and the next. She froze; she thawed. She was perhaps in league with, a little in love with Death. A strong, more urgent, whisper in her ear and she was gone. Her Father come to collect.

Picture: Sylvia Plath

See Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. 

From journal, January 2023.