EVE

It is Mother’s Day Sunday,

and I have read the chapter of Luke

before opening the dusty box

of yours, my ephemeral mother.

Your journal, sealed with the emblem of an asylum.

Your name written, chiseled into the top like a museum piece,

like red lipstick on the wall of a Seppuku exhibit.

I can see its glass case next to Plath’s.

I open your words, gloveless,

a box of evils sprouting into the world.

A red, red apple.

Thanatopsis on a forbidden tree.

I read your words crinkled as reality,

each page numbered by psychologists like time,

clocks waiting on God,

ticking of pretentious language.

Lately, I have been reading the journals

of Plath like a bible

thinking they were you,

reading the chapters and verses

and now,

and now,

and now,

I am finally holding your words which are distorted,

which are incomprehensible through a bell jar of tears.

And to see your journal

lying here next to Plath’s,

next to mine,

juxtaposed,

is erratic.

We have spoken to each other now,

and now,

and now,

through written telepathy,

our journals mingling in comparable time

discussing life as two old feminists in rocking chairs,

Emerson and Thoreau’s first words.

A red, red apple falls in the distance

and rolls not too far from the tree.