while cat stevens sang from the car stereo...

on our drive home from dropping off all my unnecessary lovelies at the goodwill, we saw an abortion protest outside a clinic. i've never actually seen one before. it took me a minute to realize what was happening but, once i did, it made me want to throw up on myself. i was honestly shocked. i mean, why not just wave around a banner that says "i'm full of hate". these are the people that the bumper sticker "jesus loves you but everyone else thinks you're an asshole" was made for. they don't seem to be aware of the fact that they aren't helping their cause, they're hurting it with this massive public display of ridicule and damning judgement. i was absolutely stunned that this kind of crap is still happening. stunned. it's so mean-spirited, unhelpful, and malicious.

when we finally got in the door of our home i opened, again, my much-loved and well-used Ariel, looking for something that would comfort me or offer some small kernel of hard-won insight. nothing much to do with abortion, or any big issue in particular, but the uneven ideals held by a mother and a daughter.


The Rival


If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected.

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abases her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive in the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.


-Sylvia Plath


i guess sometimes we are all strangers... and don't understand how to do anything other than hurt and sabotage each other. still, i hope there is hope. hope is absolutely necessary. and there is hope, even if only a little, in this poem.