the empty twilight evening

carrie and jenny and i have decided to go for the beautiful and expensive apartment. hopefully lorna has not received any better offers.

and last night we talked again. and yes it was strange, again, to hang up and not be there. i tried to read my book and stared at the lumpen inanimate phone sitting on the edge of the bed like a sleeping thing. as if it was somebody. it was a long and empty evening, and i read and read into the dark. waited for jennie to call, and she didn't, not yet. i await her news.

what am i afraid of? confidence shattered somewhat this morning on the street. the young guy, construction booted, looking at me noncomittally with the giant tall sheet of wood in his hands. as if he was waiting for me to say something and amused/disgusted that i didn't.

and on into the night i watched the clouds fade. high cirrus clouds yesterday evening like a threadbare covering for the achingly blue sky. still feeling torn in two. still feeling like i've missed the right door, somewhere there is the right hallway or room that leads into someone else's life. hello and here i am. i am sorry it took me so long.

the simple and shattering truth is that we do not live in the movies. and this confrontation with possibilities is killing me.

for days now, a copper taste in my mouth. hunger wanes.

happiness is a white box

my birthday present just arrived. it is under my desk. i am unreasonably happy.

i am going to wait like the patient saint i am to open it on thursday morning, when it will be o so much more fun to awake to a surprise package. i am afraid of waking up and feeling alone on my birthday. no one to sing to me. no one to make me a hot breakfast. i ought to get groceries and cook my own. tomorrow is banking day. indeed.

i am remembering 20th birthday (no, must have been 19th) when i drove myself to the bishop's close elk rock gardens and read under the madrone trees, and wrote and drew. and had a picnic to myself deliciously alone with the beautiful parchment sky. be with me here, i wrote to busy jennie at work i think with carlina, the poor nanny, be with me here where scarred trees enclose the green river.

plath exerpt

these i think must be from letters to richard. the hard dark english cambridge winter suffuses her writing. and i come across this which is me, me through and through:

that confident surge of exuberance in which i wrote you has dwindled as waves do, to the knowledge that makes me cry, just this once: such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.

(p. 195)

waiting and waiting. everyone has gone to lunch and someone is ringing the elevator bell relentlessly outside in the hall. like the school bell from middle school. insistent, shrill. i think our doors must seem terribly vacant to them, soundproof? i went and asked the man just now. he is just as puzzled as i.

i think i want a coke. yes. cool fizzing bubbles. the soothing syrup in the stomach. yes.

in attesa mi sto al centro del mondo

writing bland, unnecessary and indistinct poetry to calm my veins. i feel i am walking on stilts. my eyes weakened under these lamps and my fingertips scarred, numbed, from nothing at all.

tuesday/summer

i.

from lips and hips
forth through my sleeping skeleton rises a brief passion
in the unsure gleam of unawake, the bright bubble that breaks
easily on the light's sudden glare.
on waking i see i am utterly and blankly unknown on my tossed bed.
i am awake and nothing wakes with me.
i leave dreaming aside, meaningless, mute.
instead the unanswered day is waiting, alarmed, on the bedside table
at precisely seven forty-five in the sun bleached morning.
the futile ringing church bell on the street
melds indistinctly with the rush of traffic,
and i can see the indistinct late summer branches
dropping seeds futile, constant, on the barren infertile bricks.
a subtle wind disturbs them. i get out of bed
unable to grieve.

indistinguishable from others i walk a street hemmed by concrete,
the gutter basins filling with unwanted late-summer leaves;
a man at the church looks me unsteadily in the eye
he knows me, uncanny and suddenly: knows our shoes step
along familiar and in opposite directions,
he to the church door from the corner, i to my house.
where am i?
i reside in a city that is without walls, without commentary.
i live unshadowed in a late summer that floats barren seeds down on me.

ii.

we laughed, dark and sheltered and dim-lit in the bar,
a woman sung her song and then slammed out verse
until we cried, we shuddered with longing, laughing.
with your beer in hand i watched your profile,
thinking who am i to know another person?
in nothingness, with abandon and empty anonymous laughter,
i erase the idea of a city that does not know me.

in my bag unseen and cradled were lorca, jimenez:
the translations, unfamiliar, pushed me towards the past.
where are those pages i once knew?
gacela of the dark death breathed insistently into my ear,
clogging me with the escaping impossible past.
in silence i walked behind you, the narrow binding sidewalk,
to my apartment where we finished dinner and spoke of darkness.

and the telephone, cradled in the bed, spoke no words to me.
echoing in my ear like near-deaf ringing
i dimly listened instead to echoes
of the petty and beautiful brief hours:

they did not card you at the bar and that left me suddenly young,
poor, lacking sustenance. my knees slack and my nails
suddenly too long. obscene and unnecessary.
i gave you my other shirt to fend off the chill and instead
i sat there freezing, feeling my shoulders uncertainly wide,
my back exposed with discontent to the other women behind us.
leaning forward, leaning back. unsure of the proper posture
to receive these dark amplified gifts of verse in the night.
with the nervousness of the dark smoky air in my teeth
i bit off all my nails, suddenly, brutally. i tore away the evidence
of my own unseeing self.

iii.

and where were you that thursday? in fear i waited, unsustained:
there was no telephone ring, no answer.
i was twenty-two and friendless. empty as a quarry.
with the distinct sensation of growing ever younger
i resolved to not care, although the day stung me
with my own empty heart.

a copper taste filled my mouth and i was aware of not eating
for days, unsure of food and where it might take me.
in the mornings i held my own hips and sighed.
the mirror hated me back, blankly:
my curious self reflected dusty and slanted
in the old rejected mirror.

when i walked to work on the commentaried streets
there was nothing left of familiarity.
i looked directly into the eyes of the man beside the church,
who waved his cane indignantly at my retreating back.
i did not care. free and unfettered limbs followed feet
and there was nothing to see in my emptiness.

and down the street birdsong followed me gently
as i trod down into the bricks blindly
the many useless infertile seeds of the trees above.