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I'll Vacuum up my stale hair, I'll pay all my neighbors' bad debts, I'll write a poem called Yellow and put my lips down to drink it up.

Anne Sexton

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Anne Sexton
Age: 45 †
Born: 1928
Born: November 9
Died: 1974
Died: October 4
Poet
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Anne Gray Harvey
Hair
Yellow
Joy
Poem
Called
Neighbor
Hope
Debt
Debts
Write
Lips
Vacuums
Writing
Motivation
Vacuum
Pay
Stale
Drink
Neighbors

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My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend that all's certain and good, that the marriage won't end.
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The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.
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I am tearing the feathers out of the pillows, waiting, waiting for Daddy to come home and stuff me so full of our infected child that I turn invisible, but married, at last.
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Oh sharp diamond, my mother! I could not count the cost of all your faces, your moods that present that I lost. Sweet girl, my deathbed, my jewel-fingered lady...
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My ideas are a curse. They spring from a radical discontent with the awful order of things. I play clown. I play carpenter. I play nurse. I play witch.
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I did not know the woman I would be nor that blood would bloom in me each month like an exotic flower, nor that children, two monuments, would break from between my legs.
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the marriage twists, holds firm, a sailor's knot.
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I think it will be a miracle if I don't someday end up killing myself.
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The day of fire is coming, the thrush will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket.
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I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.
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Inside many of us is a small old man who wants to get out.
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