Maybe I'll end up like Sylvia Plath;

carbon monoxide halting my respiration, two children asleep in their beds protected by scraps of sopping fabric under their doors.

Maybe words will flow from my lips onto pressed earth like hers did because I stare out at the world and feel her fear.

Maybe I sit beneath a fig tree, watching the fruit fall to my feet pooling like spilled blood on white tiles staining into the grout of my being. These figs that have poisoned my future, these figs that now rest so helplessly at my feet.

My opportunities  betrayed, calling out their sincerest "Et Tu Brute"s as my mistakes rip their daggers out of their chests. Their death has come as no surprise. I made sure of that and now I sit figs curdling like coagulated arterial sludge that pumps through my narrowed, poised veins.

My blood is toxic and I now understand what she meant when she said she wept. I weep too because I do not want to know her pain. I do not want my words to fall upon pressed earth, their weight ripping apart souls of trees, their gravity forcing fruit to plummet to the cruel unforgiving ground where they will ooze their promise out, starving the larks and stealing songs from sparrows. I have hope. I have figs hanging yet.

But I cry her tears. I feel her words and I fear my children waking to sopping rags because

Maybe I'll end up like Sylvia Plath, young and burdened, my respiration halted by the carbon monoxide of my own folly.