In the meantime, there is nothing to do but wait; she has to believe that Kristina will come. Please come, she whispers into the air. Please.

She picks her favorite book off the shelf and sits down on the sofa. She opens The Bell Jar, flicking through it to where she last marked it by folding down the page.

What I want back is what I was

Before the bed, before the knife,

Before the brooch-pin and the salve

Fixed me in this parenthesis;

Horses fluent in the wind,

A place, a time gone out of mind.

It’s this that finally brings tears to her eyes. Not the words, or the strike, or the devastating kindness on Kristina’s face, nor the long, lonely drive on winding roads into the hills, then the mountains. It’s Sylvia Plath who unleashes the storm of emotion Leah has held back, suppressed, and it’s Sylvia who makes her lean into the pain, pushing herself deeper and deeper into it until she emerges into the still, black eye of the storm. From there she invites it all and observes its devastating rampage through her mind from the safe vantage point at its very core.

She gets up, suddenly filled with conviction about what to write. For so long, she’s tried to force the words, though anyone who’s ever tried to write knows words won’t be forced.

As she starts to type, she fights the urge to both laugh and cry, consciously maintaining her focus on the screen. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before, she begins, that what I really wanted all along was to write to you. So that’s what I’m going to do. A memoir, perhaps. No. A confession.

And finally, the words flow, so fast that Leah can barely keep up, and by the time she takes a break, it’s already past midnight and she is several thousand words in. It felt good, even though they were hard words to write. She still can’t be sure whether this confession, or whatever it will be, is a work of love or a work of hatred; the two always seemed intrinsically linked, like we can only hate that which we also love and crave. She gets up and stands a while in front of the bathroom mirror, taking in her bruises; purple and blue and yellow, spreading across her face like supernovae shockwaves across the black velvet universe.

29

Kristina