the baby in the barn

Nicholas Hughes, son of Sylvia Plath, has just died. He hanged himself somewhere in Alaska. Yes, he's the same Nicholas from "Nick and the Candlestick." Remember that poem? We read it in Nick Perry's class. I remember in my first week of school, desperately trying to sound smart, so that he would remember my name. Reading it I can almost taste those hot days. We were fixated on small things then. I inserted a string around the waist band of that school uniform so I could hitch my skirt up and make it shorter. Fireproof, they said. But who was it who got burned while doing something to do with drama that involved flames? I forget. I hated the women who sold the lemon chicken at Coronation Plaza so much because she was an unbelievable sexist. I hated how it was always the same people reading the poems and plays. Nasal, melodramatic voices--mostly male, a lot of Perry really--striving for some kind of timbre. I don't even know why I hated it so much, but I really did.

O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs -

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.