“Here I am,
In my favorite house in my favorite neighborhood,
Happy as a clam!”

In a room
Where the boy Yeats perhaps once slept or maybe his nurse slept,
A new broom.

Locked out,
Gas fitters had to force a window to get in the flat.
Then white-out,

Winter chill.
“I am so happy and full of fun and ideas and love”.
Primrose Hill,

Snow lies thick.
“London … the one city of the world I’d like to live in”
The babies sick.

Lack of a phone
“makes me feel cut off, along with the lack of an au pair”.
So alone.

Record snow.
“I am going to start seeing a woman doctor, free…”
But no ;

Milk and bread
By the infants’ beds and the door well sealed with masking tape.
Defeated.

Quotations from Sylvia Plath’s letters home

June 2023