mad girl

Inspired by the poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath.

i.

I live in a forest where every tree says your name.

They say it soft sometimes, like a wind that played with my hair but never pulled too hard. And then sometimes it crescendos and I am on a wave, yanked and drowned in remembering you too much and not nearly enough. I think I will die, and I wish I would, because dying is like sleeping, but I never do. I only fly under the water, a bird with a broken wing. Then the sound quiets and I am safe again. I lie on the soft moss and pretend to be dead – but don’t worry, love. I’m only sleeping.

Maybe they don’t say your name. Maybe it is only written on them and they are so curious about what it is that they read it again and again, louder and softer, hoping it will become something new and beautiful. They are not lucky like I am. They do not already know that you are new and beautiful.

But it can’t be written, because if it was, my name would be next to it, and a heart would be drawn around them, like you showed me once. It was in another forest, not this one. On a different tree. You had already carved your name on all of these trees, so you had to find a new one, and I helped you. Or maybe it wasn’t a tree at all. Maybe it was a fire hydrant, or a streetlight. Maybe there was no tree and no spreading branches, because you looked up at the uncovered moon and then you looked at me and you said they looked the same to you. You said I looked like the moon when you saw me. And I closed my eyes tight so that I could see what you saw. So that the world would drop dead and I would see it all. But then I opened my eyes and the world had only been sleeping, after all, and nothing was different except that you were there. So everything was different. Everything had been born again.

There are other plants in the forest besides just the trees. There are little discreet white mushrooms that are oh-so-polite. They only ever tiptoe. They tiptoe over my feet and across my head. I like them.

And there are vines, too. Nasty, awful vines. They creep, and are quiet like the mushrooms, but not at all like the mushrooms. They slither up my legs and chest and neck, and whisper.

I

t

h

i

n

k

I

m

a

d

e

y

o

u

u

p

i

n

s

i

d

e

m

y

h

e

a

d

Like that. And it is like a snake is behind my eyes, writhing and wailing, but it can’t get out and neither can I. Until, finally, the mushrooms bury deep into my ears and it’s gone; it’s all gone.

ii.

If I am the moon, then you must promise to be the stars. Your hands touching me, your eyes following me, your lips murmuring my name. You will be the stars surrounding me, waltzing in blue and red. I need you to be all around me, all at once and all the time.

You aren’t here now. Even when the trees are screaming your name you are not here. The darkness galloped in, and it didn’t call to say it was almost home beforehand. It came, and the stars blacked out and everything was gone. (You were gone.)

Now I live in the forest. You can’t see the stars underneath the trees, you know. Their green arms stretch out and block the sky – mothers’ arms. They think they are protecting me but they are hurting me. They sing your name to make it better. Sometimes it is. And sometimes it is burning balls of light that sear and sear until moon tears fall from the sky.

iii.

I had a dream once. I dreamed of the night you painted our names somewhere in the world before I closed my eyes and it dropped dead. I dreamed of when you told me I was the moon, and I dreamed you kissed me.

You kissed me a long, long time. Too long. The moon never had a chance to go down because you wouldn’t let her go, and the sun never came up to wash away all her insanity, and all the world was moonstruck.

But I have been insane a long time. Before your star-touch trapped all the moonrays inside of me.

Without you now, in the darkness, I can’t feel them glimmer. Maybe they were never there at all.

Maybe you were never there at all.

I

t

h

i

n

k

I

m

a

d

e

y

o

u

u

p

i

n

s

i

d

e

m

y

h

e

a

d

iv.

Tonight I dream again of you and when I wake up everything is breaking. Your hands are not on me and everything is breaking. Your stars are not circling me and everything is breaking. Your breath is not breathing my breath and your heart is not singing to my heart and everything is breaking. The trees fall over and scream your name like it will fix this but I begin to think it won’t, or else the world would have been fixed a million times a day. They fall on the ground and crush the mushrooms and the vines creep all over their splintering brown bodies.

Finally I can see the sky, but it is blank and black. The stars are gone and so the moon must have toppled out of the sky without them to hold her up. Maybe God was sitting on it because he, too, has fallen. I am sure he has. I am sure all the sky has fallen from the sky and has landed on my forest. A moon on the ground. I would laugh because it is so funny and wrong. I would laugh if you were here to laugh with me, but you’re not, so I cry.

Satan hears all the noise and all the silence and crawls out of hell to see what is going on. Go back, I say, or else all your fires will go out. You have to prod the coals and keep them alive – but he will not. He calls his demons out, too, and they kindly escort themselves out. God’s seraphim come down to see where he’s gone, and then follow Satan’s men out. Where are you going? I ask, but they will not answer.

The world is burning in silence and death. So I close my eyes and pretend to dead with it. I will fall asleep and the world will be gone. I will fall asleep into your arms. And when I open my eyes all will be born again.

v.

I used to remember all of you. I remembered you so well that you were me some days. Then some days you were the ghost that lived inside me. It’s my fault – I asked you in. But you came – You came! You waltzed in blue and red and caught me up in your ocean waves and told me I was the one that made them push and pull and break. My moon, you said. Mymoonmymoonmymoon. And I watched you and I never forgot a thing.

I remember when you came, then. I can’t recall when you waltzed out again. Was it a long time ago, love? It feels so long. It has been the longest time in this forest I live in now, without you. Where did I live when you were with me? We must have lived in the sky, because there is no place to shine in this dark place of echoes and lost, lonely trees that try to find the answer but never will. We must have lived in a house in the sky built on moonrays and stardust and all the other forevers you gave me. I think you must have had a locked box full of all of them and you would open it and let me see, and then you’d lock it up again so they’d be safe.

Where did that box go? Did you take it with you?

The trees are getting quieter now. Did you know that? Did you hear the scrape of their bark as they covered up your name and told themselves not to read it anymore? I’ll read it for you. I’ll tell them to not cover it up because I’ll read every single one of your names. Then you won’t feel that snake behind your eyes from the sound of your name being washed away.

There are so many trees, though. I could walk for days and they wouldn’t end. I won’t be able to get to them all in time. There’s not enough time! Or there is too much time, too much time without you. You promised you’d come back, but it must have been a long time because even the trees don’t believe the sounds of you will solve all the brokenness of the forest anymore. They always believed, but now they don’t.

Maybe the snake in your brain is hurting you so badly that you’ve forgotten to come back to me.

Or maybe you’ve just forgotten all on your own, like the trees have.

Maybe there is no snake.

Maybe there is no you.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

vi.

I should have picked someone else. I should have picked the lightning and thunder over the stars. I shouldn’t have let you write your name into the world – the world into your name. I should’ve never shut my eyes and let the world drop dead. I could have saved it.

Now the forest is dying. It is dying, and it is your fault. The trees are all silent and the vines creep over them. They have crawled into the trees’ mouths and squeezed their throats shut. I worry because they are so frighteningly quiet. The vines are snaking across the ground and covering the soft moss in tiny hills I can’t climb anymore. Not without you. I am frozen still and they crawl up my legs and arms. They whisper. Love, their whispers will kill me! Their hissing snake will eat my eyes out! I can’t bear it!

They have tied me down. A moon caught in a hook and pinned against the hard ground. Where will all her rays go? They feed into the earth and the vines grow stronger.

The little discreet mushrooms peek out at me from behind the dead trees. They stare without eyes. They are so lucky to not have eyes that burn and bleed tears. They tiptoe past me and their tiny heads turn to stare their eyeless stare. Please, I say.

Please.

They march toward me. The grains of their little hats quiver as they stumble over the vines to my head. As they burrow into my ears I shut my eyes and the world drops dead. Such a waste. Such arbitrary, wasteful darkness. And all because of you.

You. The nameless, gone, nothingful you.

I think I made you up inside my head.