Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I donโt want to die.
Sylvia PlathIs it the sea you hear in me? Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it.
Sylvia PlathLast year a friend went dark in a nervous city alone, the sea flashing against his glasses, the sea sorted out at last in his inner ear so he could leave this world as he'd entered it through the undependable irrational influence of water. -Kevin Jeffery Clark It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.
Sylvia PlathAnd the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness
Sylvia PlathI need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty, and Orion walks by and doesn't speak.
Sylvia PlathBut I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of 'I' that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratching on the paperโฆIโฆIโฆIโฆIโฆIโฆI.
Sylvia Plath