Whenever I lack inspiration or whenever I feel like my mind is running a million miles a minute, I always go back to the words of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath. Specifically, I like to reread “A Room of One’s Own” & “The Bell Jar.”
Inspiring Women
These stories help me remember that even the most influential female writers dealt with burdens that were sometimes too much to bear. That is what this poem is about.
I hope this poem awakens a spark of inspiration inside of your world. It’s everywhere if you can just see it.
My body is a room.
Virginia Woolf wanted a room of her own
Except,
A room of your own can be lonely.
My room is locked;
It has been for some time.
It has me both locked in and locked out.
I feel trapped in a whirlpool of dark
That swallows me from inside out.
I’m ripped,
My spleen, my appendix, all of my worthless organs,
Then my heart and my lungs.
The liquid expels from my organs
Leaking into my insides,
Eventually spilling out of me.
*
There are times when I can see myself from the outside.
It’s like if I can reach out far enough
I can caress my own skin.
I wonder if that’s how Virginia felt.
Her body was a room itself,
So she locked herself inside a hotel
Just her and her writing
But as a result,
Each day when she went home,
To face the life that she wasn’t sure she wanted
She left a piece of herself there
And day by day,
Piece by piece,
Slowly,
She fell away.
Eventually,
She never came out of that room.
*
My body is a room.
I’m not sure that’s how the story goes.
But I saw myself in Virginia Woolf.
I felt the walls closing in around me.
I felt trapped within myself
And outside of myself.
*
My body is a room,
But maybe I’m trapped in a bell jar, too.
The way Sylvia Plath was.
When I speak,
My voice is muffled by the echo of thick glass.
My mind is a bell jar.
I feel trapped inside.
I can look out at my life
And understand the world.
But mostly,
It’s a life I can look at,
But not touch.
*
Maybe that’s how Esther felt
And why she swam to the middle of the ocean.
Maybe she thought the cold would ground her to Earth.
My mind is a bell jar.
I’m not sure that’s how the story goes.
But I saw myself in Sylvia Plath.
I felt the air being sucked out me
Being trapped in the confines of that bell jar.
Eventually,
I never left.
I wrote this poem when my mind wasn’t in the best place, but reading these words now I see nothing but joy and hope. These women’s lives may have ended tragically, but they continue to inspire girls like me to this day.
thanks