Aurelia Plath
Autumn 1962
I feared this—
his black demeanor,
towering silence,
sporting the superior
threadbare jacket of the artist.
He doesn’t even
phone to inquire
about the children.
Sylvia opens the wounds
she has hidden from me—
the deep lacerations in her back—
Ted neglects Nicholas,
Ted tells her he never wanted children.
Ted has left her,
and her alone darkens
like a cellar door
drawing closed.
Aurelia suggested that Sylvia move back home, but Sylvia refused. She could not face her mother after Aurelia had witnessed the dissolution of her marriage. Sylvia’s mind-set is conveyed in her October 9, 1962, letter, published in Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963:
“… America is out for me. I want to make my life in England. If I start running now, I will never stop. I shall hear of Ted all my life, of his success, his genius … I must make a life of my own as fast as I can …”