I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free. - Sylvia Plath

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel.

That would fix a lot of people.

You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all. I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element. That gives it a kingliness, a right.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk. It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.