The Inventory Of Goodbye
I have a pack of letters,
I have a pack of memories.
I could cut out the eyes of both.
I could wear them like a patchwork apron.
I could stick them in the washer, the drier,and maybe some of the pain would float off like dirt?
Perhaps down the disposal I could grind up the loss.
Besides - what a bargain - no expensive phone calls.
No lengthy trips on planes in the fog.
No manicky laughter or blessing from an odd-lot priest.
That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow.
Blessing us.
Blessing us.
Am I to bless the lost you,sitting here with my clumsy soul?
Propaganda time is over.
I sit here on the spike of truth.
No one to hate except the slim fish of memorythat slides in and out of my brain.
No one to hate except the acute feel of my nightgownbrushing my body like a light that has gone out.
It recalls the kiss we invented, tongues like poems,meeting, returning, inviting, causing a fever of need.
Laughter, maps, cassettes, touch singing its path -all to be broken and laid away in a tight strongbox.
The monotonous dead clog me up and there is onlyblack done in black that oozes from the strongbox.
I must disembowel it and then set the heart, the legs,of two who were one upon a large woodpileand ignite, as I was once ignited, and let it whirlinto flame, reaching the skymaking it dangerous with its red.
Anne Sexton
Other author posts
Wanting to Die
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage Then the almost unnameable lust returns Even then I have nothing against life
The Truth The Dead Know
Gone, I say and walk from church,refusing the stiff procession to the grave,letting the dead ride alone in the hearse It is June I am tired of being brave
Sylvias Death
for Sylvia Plath O Sylvia, Sylvia, with a dead box of stones and spoons, with two children, two meteors wandering loose in a tiny playroom, with your mouth into the sheet, into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer, (Sylvia, Sylvia where di...
The Red Dance
There was a girlwho danced in the city that night,that April 22nd,all along the Charles River It was as if one hundred men were watchingor do I mean the one hundred eyes of God The yellow patches in the sycamoresglowed like miniature fla...
