Sylvia Plath’s diary reads like being tied to a whipping post,
Not writing enough. Not pretty enough. Not smart enough.
She was the Lady Lazarus, bound by her ideas of her supposedly
crippling ineptitude.
Although I’ve never attempted suicide and covered up my cooling body in a basement crawlspace, I know what it’s like to have an inner world
made up of deadspace and spiders, a decay that’s
only visible to the self that can look inward.
I’ve made people weep by reading my stories outloud,
people who tell me I’m beautiful as if they were sun-struck by the glinting halo
of a half god. I’ve convinced myself this is a mirage.
Perhaps I am only good at writing, because dusting the basement
of crippling shame, attempting to realign, improve so that
my self-hatred is no longer justified,
requires enormous effort. It is impossible to create
a palace from ashes.
Yet, I know this is a lie.
“Oh, a writer is never satisfied with their work,” a woman says
to me. And I think, maybe if I drink this beer a little faster, it’ll rush to my head
instead of my sudden anger. I don’t have the hours to explain
that self-hatred is not the most efficient method for self-improvement.
That if I could’ve been writing instead of white-knuckling, dragging bare knees
against floorboards, trying to choke down the boulder that’s trying to crush
me like Sisphyus, I wouldn’t have to scavenge for worthwhile time,
inside of trash pits, and emotional bullet wounds, and the spaces between headaches and blood full of wine.
You need to understand:
I need that time but it doesn’t belong to me. Not anymore.
Too many nights of having it leeched from me, my worth squeezed out my fingertips.
Everyone does the hours to become human,
and I’ve still got so many to go.
More advice from the well intentioned.
“There’s too much noise for you to write. Go out to the country.
Writing is what happens
in the spaces inbetween machinery whir.”
So, I went to Oklahoma.
Away from the storm, I thought, away from the tornado that had me clenching my teeth
so I wouldn’t shatter.
But even in coyote quiet, in cool air, I’m burning up.
I’d been inside the storm for so long that I now carried
the storm inside me.
A thousand writing retreats, chateaus, and peaceful mornings with
green landscape and coffee, cannot keep the windows from breaking,
the desk levitating, the fever from rising.
And the more I write, the hotter I get.
I’ve got more boys buried than a cemetery.
They tell me, “You’re going to be famous one day,
if you’ll only listen to what I say.”
their resume is a pile of bones, a short story from college,
a failed writing career, a pile of red hair that they pulled
out of their last girlfriend’s head. The writing advice books
never warned me of people who would try to bleed me,
own me, own the things I created, drag their teeth
over my words so that some days when they spit
blood I taste it on the back of my tongue. Unsure of whether
I’m myself or the creature they wanted to make me.
That kind of advice should be between the chapter about semi-colons and writing dynamic characters.
I’d take it in the footnotes: “Learn not to read the crafted love poems
to the girlfriend who will scream, “I’ll never be a good of a writer as you!” Beware of the
girl who whispers breathless, ‘I want to be your Edie Sedgwick.’ At the time
it may sound peaceful, to own someone, but really when you sleep
they’re eating your spine. One day you’ll wake to find
all the bones gone.
I try to write now. Intentions and ash so fine I could mix it in a drink,
barely taste it. The ghosts don’t float. There are more every year.
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Stock photo from Pixabay
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