ex-duet

Words by contributing writer: Erin Norton | Photos by: Erin Norton

After “Two Lovers And A Beachcomber By The Real Sea” by Sylvia Plath

I am the beachcomber

Born from Sylvia’s pen.

Collecting what’s tumbled

From overtilled sand.

Sea glass. Algae. Mussels.

My mouth stays clammed shut.

Preventing hope from sputtering,

Bubbling like ocean foam.

Humor me.

Tell me to put my ear up

To a rotten conch shell

And listen for the ebb and flow.

Like two cans connected by wires,

Nothing waits for me on the other side;

Other than the clanking

Of hollow metal.

You’ve forced yourself in again.

Breaching my consciousness

For the first time in months.

I’m still a failure to launch.

My one success is rapturing you.

My hero’s misfires captured

In what some call poetry;

A triumph, a prayer;

In what I call an ethnography

Gone wrong.

Misquoting my prose in your own,

I seethe into my journal, tackling

Every urge to wear the martyr’s badge,

To incessantly correct you,

To reclaim the romantic,

To yank the roots of your dandelion,

Forcing itself into the fortress I built

Specifically to keep you out.

—

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in defense of my real housewives upbringing