A Letter to Sylvia Plath

Dear Sylvia,

You wrote about reaching out for these figs on a tree and how it felt to watch them all start to die and plop at your feet but no one told you that you were the tree. Those figs were not choices you couldn’t make but experiences that you survived to get to the next place or season or maybe even just another reason but I assure you, my friend, you were the reason. You were the reason the fruits even existed and bloomed and then grew into plump little balloons filled with juices and dreams.

Without you, there would not have even been a tree.

I can’t help but wonder, if someone had told you this sooner and made you believe it…. Would you have stayed on this Earth longer and bore more delicious fruit? Could this simple point have saved you and become your root?

Unfortunately, a man came and chopped you down and ripped out your roots.

A man in the woods.

A man named Ted Hughes.

-Stefani Cruz