"Three Women (five years later)"

An homage-filled sequel to "Three Women" by Sylvia Plath, set five years after the events of the original poem.

(five years later)

FIRST VOICE:

I keep finding myself 

Sleeping in the forrest,

Beneath pink flowers.

To have white dots spattered across my face 

And small velvet ears, and a little fawn to care for. 

To bite into opal apples, their yellowing skin and rosy flesh, 

And stare into the eyes of their obsidian seeds 

As I place the lonely halves into their crate. 

I want to bite into your tiny cheeks,

Your blushing crunchy flesh

Stuck like apple skin between my teeth, 

Your brown eyes peering up at me. 

To say a prayer, that I won’t have 

To place his halved corpse into plywood coffin, 

Worm-wived, buried under fallen figs. 

For now he is safe, for now he is all mine, 

He is small and red-lotused and still all mine. 

To bear an angel and hold my angel, 

And bear no kings turned bitter.

SECOND VOICE:

I keep finding myself 

Peering at the stars at night, 

Alone at the edge of the universe.

Dressed and buttoned up for bed, 

But restless from sleep that never comes,

A slumber with a face that looks just like you.

Peeking up at Venus in the dusk,

Searching for pulsars, for magnetars, 

For black holes that only reveal themselves 

Because of the stars around them, the only evidence they exist, 

The only contrast in the darkness. 

You, my black hole, you who I never bore, 

And I’m the stars spinning around you. 

There is no violence in our orbit anymore, 

No dream of massacre, no accusation found. 

And still I am trapped into frigid position 

By a profound absence of all I cannot have. 

THIRD VOICE:

I keep finding myself 

As a little girl. The little pigtailed thing 

That can’t fall asleep on a school night

And curls up in my mother’s arms. 

Watch her breathe in and out.

Watch the light seep in through the canopy above me. 

When she comes to me in my sleepless nights,

My little pigtailed thing, prods her way into my bed,

My red, terrible little girl.

I wrench away from her, and think:

I should have murdered this that murders me.

When I wake up in the early morning she is gone. 

Shallow island, red with cries,

Asleep under someone else’s canopy. Thank God.

And so I sit alone in the kitchen,

Feel the dull guilt of something missing,

And I’d beg for some forgiveness, 

But begging’s not my business.