Sasha

SASHA: "Hey, Mum, I just bought The Never's Antartica! ...So I don't have enough money to go to the movies with Julia and Ben. Can I borrow a few dollars?"
MUM: "All The Never wants is your time and money and sex. Sure, my purse is in the car."

I'm starting to understand why my wandering fetal spirit chose to manifest in that (this?) specific womb.

I'm making love to you,
But you ain't making love for me,
I'm starving myself,
Just to feel the aching hungry.

I accredit the maternal feelings I possess for the world to my twin: I often feel personally responsible for happenings that have no association with me. I have already split my life with another, like a mother with no child but the Earth I was born to.

There is a man that lives in the woods behind my house. He owns nothing but an old scarred guitar that sometimes wails loose chords. In the hollow body of this guitar lives a family of Daddy Long Leg spiders, they are ardent spectators to his shrill songs. In exchange for their small establishment, their occasional hymn, the Long Legs wind their threads around trees, weaving for the man a most intricate home.

I can feel this Fall on my back, shifting into wind as soon as I turn to look. I can feel it whispering to me and teasing my shoulders. Wind makes me humble: I have a egotistical tendency to think outside of my head, the area around me MY domain, swirling into nothingness all around me. The wind twists my hair away from me and makes my skirts flutter and makes me feel small again, blowing all those outside thoughts from view. Again I am just a rotating dot on this Earth. I've always loved the Fall.      

The little pattern in my skin looks like barbed wire. Like the cracked and cinched and thorny stems of roses all entwined. 

I used to be a ballerina, vain and renowned for my beauty. I was every trembling heart and I was every man's desire. Until I was banished here by the ugly witch doctor. Punished for my vanity, for my affairs with her husband, I float above all human eyes. My imaginary pedestal composed into fluffy white under me, tapering in the middle with my weight. Stubborn, I continue to dance. I move my feet angrily, angrily fast, and I send a little spark down to Earth. I hope one day it's path will strike her. Lightning in my feet. 

I thought I was crazy. A crazy lonely old widow. But I heard it - "Hello?" from the fireplace. "Hello, I'm just a chimney sweep. I've fallen into your chimney and gotten stuck. Unfavorable stuck." I hadn't heard voices in years, male voices in decades. Only Alice had ever come to see me, making tea and sitting in silence in front of this ash-stained cinderblock mouth. "I promise I am not trying to hurt you. My name is Howard. What is yours?" This is how Howard became my captive. Held hostage only by soot and my conversation, he relieved my loneliness. I believe he fell in love with me: knowing only my voice he couldn't have comprehended my worn skin or tired eyes.   

Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
...A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day.
-Sylvia Plath


The first time I read this was for a seminar in English class. I thought it was about a fish. In a lake. I wrote a five page analysis. Apparently, I was wrong.