Mirror

I want to share this with you. I read this too many times, and i still love every word of it. Sylvia Plath is ... talented.

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 a 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.

Now I am a lake. 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, like a terrible fish.

After reading jacky's post about loneliness, this poem almost narrates loneliness itself. I noticed while i was typing this up. Loneliness is, in essence, a mirror. A time for self-reflection. A time for the raw flesh to be revealed with all its red, no matter how ugly it is. The "liars" she speaks of, are the outlets that keep us busy. We look to the liars to avoid this mirror, although, we are only delaying the fated encounter as we know it. Wow, I never read it this way until now.

snip snip

I've been eating too much leftover thanksgiving food lately. I can feel my muscles deteriorating to fat, yet i refuse to work out. We'll see how long this lasts.

I've just been thinking for awhile, the image of a woman cutting her hair. It's seen many times in the media (let me point you to Mulan, and the countless music videos about women going through difficult times) as a symbol of- at least for me- independence, a new slate, a new identity. There's something so thrilling about watching a girl spy dye and cut half her hair off in a gas station bathroom.
That image means something quite different to me nowadays after I started looking at it in a new perspective. Perhaps, the woman is exercising the only power she has left, or thinks she has left. She alters what she has control over. She finds she is not so independent, so powerful, so... her own, that she tries to catch just a glimpse of what's left of her by clutching the pair of scissors (this reminds me of Britney Spears' notorious behavior). And i believe there's the same principle behind suicide.
Cutting your own hair as a mini suicide. Did i go too far?

love this

confession

this will make you laugh,
i find myself really wanting a relationship nowadays.
to keep it clear, i want a boyfriend.
.. a teenage dream.
.. a time i can think back later and laugh at.

to my... pt2

lips stay rough against your teeth,
you foolish girl lost in self-justification,
you lost yourself in a sea of murmured words.

every syllable falls crisp to your toes,
you foolish girl you kept your head to low.
you thought not seeing things meant not knowing things.

now i watch you wading through the waist deep waters,
you foolish girl you have kept your head to low.

to my ...

sometimes, my love, sometimes it is not always the black or white crayon.
at times, my love, it will be the color you have never imagined in your hand.
i know right now it seems as though they hand you black in one hand, and white in the other,
you must always remember, every color has its potency.
and you must always remember that no matter which color you choose,
that one is tight between your fingers
and you must never let go.

ophelia

she drowns, or lets the waters drown her

she succumbs to a muddy death
after heartbreaks,
after long gazes to the ones who scripted her,
she, now alone, decides to do something:
she dies.

she drowns, or lets the waters drown her
her clothes spread wide
they drink and drink til they submerge in her tears
her hair aligned with flowers that float
she is now ready:
and she dies.

Job 22

Submission and peace.
Knees bent. Speak to me.
Submission.
Passivity.
I, the receiver of all actions.
I, the blessed
the loved
the humbled
the broken
the fed
the weakened
the led
the forgiven.
Negativity.
Submission.
Knees bent, face down. Speak to me.
Give to me
bless me
love me
humble me
break me
feed me
weaken me
lead me
forgive me.
Peace