Saturday, 30 October 2010

Tales Of A Tub

This is it:
the storybooks,
the soft carpets, and now,
at the end of the corridor,
the bath is running.

The water is tongueless, breathless.
I make a well in the thunder,
and shape a space for myself
to rock shut in the crux of a chemical
imbalance, this dyskrasia. It tastes
of finality: the salt of stones
and shattered wrists. Restless slumber.


But
it is also this:
my fists clenched on the future,
a destiny of my own design,
my own undoing. There is no aura,
no mystique – just a raw kind of power.
An open weakness. No more
tapping tables, knocking on would-
have-beens. I'll just lay back,
get waterlogged;

get ready to dream.

* * *

Dig, Ophelia. Just keep on digging.

This - this was painful. It's based on something that happened a while ago now, but I've never quite managed to tell anyone. I'm going through dark spaces at the moment, and I keep reliving this, over and over. Thought maybe it's time I let it breathe.

Again, sorry if this makes anyone feel uncomfortable.


Title's taken from Tale of a Tub by Plath, which this is in no way based on - it was just something I stumbled across again whilst wracking my brains for a title.

2 comments:

  1. I'm sorry you're going through a bad time :( *hugs* This and the previous poem feel very intense - brilliant as usual, but intense and dark. I hope writing them was cathartic and achieved what you hoped it would xxx

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  2. Thank you, dear. I think writing them helped purge the crapness a bit, helped externalise it all. I'm feeling a lot better now anyway (:
    *hugs* xxx

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