Every woman's fear

Every now and then I to go and read through some thoroughly neurotic and depressive poetry just for the kicks.

Makes me feel better about myself; I mean, compared to them (many of whom killed themselves before the age of 40), my problems are nothing.


Here's one I've loved for the longest time. Read it when I was 17 and it struck a chord. Re read it at age 24 and now it more than strikes a chord , it tugs at every hidden fear that women's magazines have fostered in me through the years.

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

By Sylvia Plath