Stealth

A poem about Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and me.

She wasn’t content with what she’d been given,
so she blew the white crystals up her nose.
She had to stick her head in the opening of an oven
and then, with scissors, they cut off all her clothes.

She didn’t hate life, but hated the fact she was alone,
so she walked into the ocean with smooth, cracked stones
in her pockets, they were the weight of God
a savior from the People of Pods.
In the algae she built herself a home.

She wasn’t out of luck, but fully out of breath,
her vision only drew a fragile blank,
but she knew it was going to take
guts she didn’t have and so much stealth
to take the last step over the plank.

It wasn’t hatred for today, not the present in particular,
or even all the forces out of control—natural, centripetal,
but she fought it, and she wrestled
with the heart of a demon
and she brought out all of her horses
but the fucking thing wouldn’t leave her alone!