Edge by Sylvia Plath
The woman is perfected.
Her deadBody wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessityFlows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bareFeet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each littlePitcher of milk, now empty.
She has foldedThem back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the gardenStiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
Today, as I read this last piece that Plath wrote —six days before committing suicide— I noticed how ironic the difference between her view on the moon and mine is. They're such different portraits of her, and yet I can see her being both.
She can be both connected and distant. She can hold me like a mother holds her first-born daughter, and still see my dead body and look past it.
Because although at times it seems like we are the only ones who really exist —like we're the dead among the living, and the living among the dead— I'm still just a human in her eyes, and she's but a big rock in mine.