“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.”
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar 1963

Drown me in the lake behind out old rental house.
Watch as my last breath trickles out of my throat.
I’ll lay still in a white dress as a tribute to my run away naivety.
Hair dripping cold water I am nothing more than a lump on the edge
of the water, nothing more than fish food.

I watched my future dangle in front of me like
pieces of ripening fruit
always just out of reach,
always rotting too quickly.
I am always too afraid to put my hands out toward them.
But I used to have plans.
Before I realized how many things are impossible.
I had plans.
Before I watched every piece of fruit on every tree
shrivel up and fall to the ground, I had plans.
I’ve learned to not expect anything of myself.
I will never be let down again.

Everything drifts off,
floats up into the sky,
then dissipates like smoke out of my lungs.
I try to hold it in.
I try to suffocate myself by my own intentions.
I try to let my own design take me over.
I can hold them for only a moment.
I can hardly touch them.
I can never hold them.
I just watch them float away.

Drown me in the lake behind out old rental house.
Watch as my last breath trickles out of my throat.
I’ll lay still in a white dress as a tribute to my run away naivety.
Hair dripping cold water I am nothing more than a lump on the edge
of the water, nothing more than fish food.