For Sylvia Plath (CW, Suicidal Ideation)
I think sometimes of how I would like
to be remembered. For loyalty,
for competence, for generosity
to friends, perhaps. For creativity
in the kitchen, for the number
of drafts I would take - and as such
even if the detractors would not agree
on my skill, would not at least at my
seriousness with craft. But I know
what I would be reduced to if things
go the way of my sleepwalking dreams.
There are no more gas ovens
and the undercurrent of our thin rivers
are surely not strong enough to drown
me, no matter how many pebbles
I were to fill my pockets with. But
we do not lack high buildings here.
The call of the ground is a siren that
comes in unceasing waves; sometimes gentle
laps, sometimes strong enough to knock
me over my feet, the same as the pills
that night, but still I am here, if for little reason
other than spite, at the thought that this
would be all I would be remembered for
if I were to follow that call - joining a rank
of women poets, hysterical poets, poets who
had complex lives but with inevitable ends -
reduced to those ends and shamed for them
by the same kind of men in the same
dismissive breath. And worse still
I think about a blank-faced stranger thumbing
through my diary, the letters I have kept,
sending them off to be read by the world
and how everyone then would read them
thinking Fool, poor fool because they would
find then - even if there have been thousands
of books I have read, a hundred topics I am
eloquent in - none of that would matter
because they would find that the only thing
I could write about was you.
Bio:
Natalie Wang is a Singaporean poet. Her book The Woman Who Turned Into A Vending Machine is a collection of poems on metamorphosis, myth, and womanhood. You can find her at www.nataliewang.me.
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