After Sylvia Plath’s ‘Love Letter’
I was a stone before you came.
Life long and low in stasis, incongruous
in my ordinariness, impervious to care.
Grey grit, flint, fragment flung far -
bruise of air - footnote unnoticed.
Solid sorrow, a fossilized tear. Sediment
of some other where.
But when you appeared, I became
a hop and a skip, a wish skimming
silvered water, crystalline veins new.
A firm promise, world in your hand,
warm, porous to promises, permanent
fixture deep at home
in the well of your heart.
Then all of a sudden: sunk. Thunk of
an unwanted thought. Balderdash.
Transformation incomplete. The dredge
of a dream, kernel of uncare. Scuppered.
Dropped there in the dark, ripple of regret,
forgotten, forlorn. Hardened now to the point
I might as well be rock.
Siobhán Mc Laughlin is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co. Donegal. Her poems have been published in The Honest Ulsterman, The Ekphrastic Review, Hive Poetry Journal, The Martello Journal, The Waxed Lemon and more.
More work by Siobhán Mc Laughlin
Tel: 028 7126 6946
Email: hueditor@theverbal.co
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