Dear Sylvia Plath,
I am sorry that you are dead and I am still alive.
I, too, may be a bit of a Jew.
In 1996 I contacted a Jewish attorney in Beverly Hills.
I wanted to give my unborn child to a Jewish couple
who resided in Manhattan Beach.
My mother and stepfather bullied me into finding
a Christian couple instead.
"I won't know my grandchild in this lifetime.
But I want to know my grandchild in the next."
My Gemini mother said that.
"They're gonna take your baby then drop you
like a hot potato. And I won't pay for you
to fly back to Texas."
My Virgo stepfather said that.
I have wanted to die more than a few times, Sylvia.
Once in 1999 I drank some vodka and washed down
some pills with cheap wine.
I looked for my stepfather's gun.
I couldn't find it.
I blasted Billie Holiday songs in the dark
and screamed at God.
I assumed he was hard of hearing.
I picked up my mother's ceramic musical angel.
I wanted to hear something pretty.
I dropped the angel and somehow cut myself.
I remember sitting on the toilet bleeding and blubbering.
Judy Blume got me through my adolescence.
Margaret was so glamorous.
I had a Jewish friend when I was nine.
I went to temple with her once.
I liked it much better than the Southern Baptist church
I attended with my mother and siblings.
Every Sunday was DIE WORM DIE.
And someday you will see an angel in the sky and
you better have Jesus in your heart
or else you will burn in HELL.
I saw my first dead body when I was nine.
My cousin Daryl.
"He looks like he's sleeping," my mother said.
No. He looked like he was fucking DEAD.
I dreamed of Daryl trying to climb out of the
Bottomless Pit.
You knew much more in thirty years
than I know now in my fourth decade.
But did you really know to your fucking marrow
that work would set you free?
Work did set you free and flying
higher than I will ever reach
even on my tippy toes.
I'm far from brilliant.
I no longer possess a uterus
but I am still bleeding.
I'm common, Sylvia.
You would have dismissed me
as so much Texas trash.
What do I have?
I have Saturn in the tenth.
I have a busy fifth house
with an exalted Mars.
Virgo rising.
Virgo moon.
Sun and Venus so chilly in the sixth.
I'm dismissed by many.
Invisible, even.
Sylvia I'm more ancient than the bees
that swarmed inside your head.
I'm more terrible than Ariel.
I'm denser than a bar of soap.
But it was a neat trick you pulled.
Carving all those words in stone.
Damning.
Cursing.
Not taking
a single
fucking
syllable
back.
I'm black like that, too
but unlike you
I have survived
the oven.
There's some small freedom
in being so much ash.
Would you laugh to see such sport?
It's a grim business
but yes.
I think somehow
you would.
I am sorry that you are dead and I am still alive.
I, too, may be a bit of a Jew.
In 1996 I contacted a Jewish attorney in Beverly Hills.
I wanted to give my unborn child to a Jewish couple
who resided in Manhattan Beach.
My mother and stepfather bullied me into finding
a Christian couple instead.
"I won't know my grandchild in this lifetime.
But I want to know my grandchild in the next."
My Gemini mother said that.
"They're gonna take your baby then drop you
like a hot potato. And I won't pay for you
to fly back to Texas."
My Virgo stepfather said that.
I have wanted to die more than a few times, Sylvia.
Once in 1999 I drank some vodka and washed down
some pills with cheap wine.
I looked for my stepfather's gun.
I couldn't find it.
I blasted Billie Holiday songs in the dark
and screamed at God.
I assumed he was hard of hearing.
I picked up my mother's ceramic musical angel.
I wanted to hear something pretty.
I dropped the angel and somehow cut myself.
I remember sitting on the toilet bleeding and blubbering.
Judy Blume got me through my adolescence.
Margaret was so glamorous.
I had a Jewish friend when I was nine.
I went to temple with her once.
I liked it much better than the Southern Baptist church
I attended with my mother and siblings.
Every Sunday was DIE WORM DIE.
And someday you will see an angel in the sky and
you better have Jesus in your heart
or else you will burn in HELL.
I saw my first dead body when I was nine.
My cousin Daryl.
"He looks like he's sleeping," my mother said.
No. He looked like he was fucking DEAD.
I dreamed of Daryl trying to climb out of the
Bottomless Pit.
You knew much more in thirty years
than I know now in my fourth decade.
But did you really know to your fucking marrow
that work would set you free?
Work did set you free and flying
higher than I will ever reach
even on my tippy toes.
I'm far from brilliant.
I no longer possess a uterus
but I am still bleeding.
I'm common, Sylvia.
You would have dismissed me
as so much Texas trash.
What do I have?
I have Saturn in the tenth.
I have a busy fifth house
with an exalted Mars.
Virgo rising.
Virgo moon.
Sun and Venus so chilly in the sixth.
I'm dismissed by many.
Invisible, even.
Sylvia I'm more ancient than the bees
that swarmed inside your head.
I'm more terrible than Ariel.
I'm denser than a bar of soap.
But it was a neat trick you pulled.
Carving all those words in stone.
Damning.
Cursing.
Not taking
a single
fucking
syllable
back.
I'm black like that, too
but unlike you
I have survived
the oven.
There's some small freedom
in being so much ash.
Would you laugh to see such sport?
It's a grim business
but yes.
I think somehow
you would.
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