Your Heart is an Empty Room

I have become 
a statistic
of the ever-elusive
and probably partially
fake Sylvia Plath Effect.


Female poets
are more likely than
anyone else in the
population to 
develop mental illnesses.


And so it looks like
my passion doomed me,
or something like that.


And I believe it makes sense,
I think the brains of poets
function in incredibly different
ways than those of say, engineers
or astronauts. Poets tend
to be different individuals,
different in an elusive way.


I think we are an observant
bunch, a group which 
runs the world through 
a machine in their heads
before they can process it,
so it comes out a little 
funny. Like a double-exposed 
photograph or something.


So perhaps it's
a lousy excuse for fate,
but the poetry
lodged itself
in my ill-found blood
and made itself a nest.
And then it proceeded
to poison me in the 
most beautiful way.


And then it got really bad,
you come to the brink
of everything
and you try to give up
on everything.
Every aspect falls apart
and you sit and cry
and sleep.


And then it comes back to you,
and you realize.


At least that thing
is going to be there
forever.