Not That Plath

A lesser poet of married name
and borrowed fame,
her glorious, polished words
are filtered through the sieve
of my own leaky mind.
I scratch and claw them forth,
no elegant method here,
seeping from the paper
like the speckling
of tiny red wounds
scraped from itching skin
too hard and fast
by splintered nails,
nervously gnawed ragged.

She, the cold goddess,
encased in the untouchable,
martyred, marble layering
of an early and tragic death,
sealed her children away
from the deadly slumber
with paper and an evening meal,
away from the gaping maw
in which she placed her head.

I, far past an age she never reached,
trudge my stumbling feet,
rub blurred and aging eyes,
shiver through the beginning chill
of each waking day,
and shuffle toward a warmth she could not find,
not even within an open oven’s door.