Nancy Hunter, Sylvia’s friend and roommate at Smith
Summer 1954
Sylvia feeds off my leftovers.
I toss Edwin curbside
after a night of skirting around
the divan, escaping his advances.
Most girls would run from this sort
of brute, move out of the way
of Edwin’s falling anvil.
But Sylvia reviled
and then followed after Edwin.
Almost magnetized, she accepted
his calls and dinner invitations,
only to feel buyer’s remorse.
He cut her, the bastard,
ripped her during intercourse
so that blood like lava
gushed between her legs.
Sylvia said it was her first time.
When the bleeding wouldn’t stop,
I took her to the hospital for repair,
forced the little weasel to drive us there.
He said he’d check on Sylvia tomorrow,
but I knew his intentions
were fake promissory notes.
I wanted to spit on his trench coat,
dunk his big head in a vat of tar
and roll him in dirt,
but instead I told him
not to bother calling.
I protect my Sylvia and she watches
after me. I will stop her from jumping
in front of trains, even if I have to bind
my own hands and feet to the rail.
The author Ronald Hayman asserts in his The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath that Nancy felt that Sylvia sometimes counted on “crises to give her creative inspiration,” and that “for the sake of her poetry and her stories she [took] risks and [depended] on other people to rescue her from dangerous situations.”