Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

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I find myself enjoying Sylvia Plath more and more as I reach into my twenties now. While I’ve hardly had an experience like the one she describes here, I find the way that she paints it very striking.

As difficult as it is to admit, we often make fictions of our obsessions. The things we prize become more and more difficult to possess as we idealize them and rob them of their tangibility. In romance, in particular, this is dangerous as it can leave us disappointed with real humans and searching for the ‘perfect’ lover that exists only inside our head and whose name we have forgot.