Why, in a gas oven, dear Sylvia,
did you stick your pretty, middle-class head?
Was the life of upper suburbia
too much for you that you\'d rather be dead?
If, like you, we gassed ourselves to death at thirty,
we\'d never forgive ourselves for leaving
behind our children. We\'d feel unworthy,
and selfish for causing them much grieving.
But, at eight, you witnessed your father\'s demise;
and bore for life an emotional scar
(which you never were able to exorcise),
a grief which you relived in “The Bell Jar.”
You should not be condemned, dear Sylvia,
for we knew not your melancholia—.