“Kiss me and you will see how important I am.”
Life is a solitary wound,
a forbidden door that sometimes opens.
Listen to the silence —
but always with tenderness.
Talk about death
with phrases of ash,
without prayers.
And if she takes your hand
in hers, so cold...
say her name without stuttering:
I am Sylvia.
Free from the smell of hospitals
and the cries of the asylum.
Thank you for giving me a voice
to sing in the afterlife.
(Tribute to Sylvia Plath, American poet and writer — 1932–1963)