Turning 32
I turned 32
Last July and I remember thinking
I win
After reading the Bell Jar, enthralled, my secret self, my soul mate
And her betrayal
But not today Plath, I have outlived you
Clever? High achieving? Anxious that recognition doesn’t equal action, value? So was I and here I am
She jeered prophetically
Imposter take a bow
How narcissistic to imagine she was taunting me all along
Perhaps my own epilogue is waiting to pounce
‘Strangled to death by a fig tree’
I look at my him watching endless YouTube videos on the couch
Company stale, conversation cadaverous, but safe, comfortable and surely, if nothing else, love
Take that, Elliot
You pontificate that older men mixed with an arrogant, intellectual dismissal of frivolity and joy
Would bring me nothing but misery
And yet here I am and I am happy
I win
You cannot know my mind, don’t even try
To tell me that I am clutching at pride, suppressing the memories of touch and noise and solitude and other men
Who feel things and do things and hold up their end of an argument
Shit.
Had I not opened this chapter of my life knowing every page
I could pretend this experience was accidental, wholly mine
And not ours
Esther’s, Dorothea’s and mine, the pious first-born fools you left me no excuse to be
Living and reliving the same compressed self-sacrifice