THREE POEMS

Confession

t’s something I’m not supposed to say, so I’ll say it: I have some of Sylvia Plath’s hair. In 2009, when I was doing research in the Plath archive at the Lilly Library at Indiana University, I met K., a local scholar. We became friendly. K. had been doing Plath research for many years. An abundance of Plath hair is cataloged in the archive: locks of baby hair, teenage ponytails, tresses, amber braids. Plath’s mother saved everything. One night at dinner I confessed to K. that I’d been tempted to steal a few strands of Plath’s baby hair, but decided against it. Just the thought made” “I have to find it first. It’s in the house somewhere.” After I returned home, I emailed K. and reminded her of her offer. She wrote that she’d let me know when she located it. Months went by. I reminded again. “Still haven’t found it,” she replied. I began to doubt that she would come through. But eventually she did, and sent me, in an envelope on which she’d written “baby hair,” much more than I expected: a small golden-brown mass. K. also sent some to P., a fellow Plathoholic. (When I confessed to P., he divulged that he too was a recipient of K.’s contraband.) I told J., a poet friend and Plath fan, about my secret stash. With tweezers, I carefully extracted a couple of strands from the mass and, the next time I saw J., presented them to her. J. later told me she inserted them (with tweezers, no doubt) into an empty pill capsule (think: ), which she placed in her red Sylvia Plath matchbox, alongside a tiny white plastic horse (think: “Ariel”) and silver charms of a typewriter and half-moon. J. had pasted the matchbox with pictures of a bee, Plath, a woman’s hand listlessly holding a glued-on miniature red silk rose, and a quote from one of Plath’s poems: . For a while I misplaced the baby hair. It was in the house somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t find it. At last I came across it: I’d put it in a box of photographs for safekeeping. When I first received the baby hair from K., I bought, on Amazon, a small red wooden box to put it in. Made in Poland. Decorated with hearts and flowers. Plathian: But it remains in K.’s envelope. I’ve yet to give the hair a proper home.