Sylvia & Virginia & Anne & Ophelia (/"Baroness of Dusk")

tw: death, suicide, suicidal ideation

i just learned
from my twin brother,
freshly returned to Denmark
after his holiday tenure here
in North Carolina, where I've
found myself dwelling-- our
homeland-- after thirteen years
of living in NYC and a sweeping
pandemic made my reasons
for living there (performing 
artist, community organizer)
less sustainable and alluring

i have my own house 
with a studio and backyard
and i sunk into the deepest
depression of my entire life
driving at dusk watching
black trees utter their branches
against flamingo pink 
and violet-smeared skies
how nice it would be to die
i mean, yes, the inherent
violence of such a possibility
but the impossibility of 
continuing to live felt so
wrenching in the standstill, 
and for the first time since
i was a child, drenched in
sadness and the doom 
of a nation and planet,
i no longer saw the portal
that glowed at the other
end of the tunnel, a la,
"there's always something
to live for!" and "life is
beautiful" (i wasn't denying
on the highway, making love
to the skyline from the depths
of my being, and chronicling
in minute detail the bends
and arcs of the tree limbs
the flavors of gradation
the tints of sunset echoed
and flowed, my favorite
time of day.

and it's different in winter, 
in fall, in coldness, in 
unseasonable warmth 
that is becoming the new
normal, how a tree-lined
highway looks in transition
from day to night, it's 
the starkness of the silhouette
(no longer lush and plush
with summertime's foliage,
save for the evergreens
standing tall-- the loblolly
pine north carolina's state
tree)

i thought of how sylvia
said, in one of her journals,
that the thing about life,
was that you never knew 
what would happen,
essentially, a reason to
go on being.
this is before she met ted,
got famous, had babies,
wrote her most prolific
reams (but how stunning 
was her college-scribed,
"johnny panic and the bible
of dreams," in title alone?)
all of the ingredients, 
and her childhood,
and her inheritance
from daddy, daddy, 
you bastard, 
and the mother that
placed them in matching 
beds and curlers

she eventually found
the kindest act was to
disappear herself from
the human plane,
leaving plates of bread 
and glasses of milk
for her children Freida
and Nicholas so they
would be fed when 
they found her dead.

i learned that
Lizzie Siddall,
the artist who posed
as the self-drowned
Ophelia, whom I'd
devoted my summer
to honoring, stealing
back the ritual of death
into something of a decision
to transition to another plane, 
elementally supported and heard
rather than cold and stark and mad
as they claimed her to be, 
"OPHELIA REPROGRAMMING"
was the performance i made
based on the poem i wrote
inspired by the painting
born from shakespeare's play,
his daughter also named
Susannah, Lizzie Siddal
caught pneumonia posing
for the painting, and millais
didn't notice, so engrossed
was he in portraying 
the deceased, floating beauty
she so rigorously embodied

and then later, she, a painter
in her own right, responsible
in part for a brand of portrayed
beauty that went viral so to speak,
not just the aesthetic, but the spirit
of it, died of a laudanum overdose
so it goes

those shirts that list names
of social justice advocates
or defining principles of a place
(salmon & coffee & rain & weed
for seattle, par example) what if
i made one like:
Sylvia
& Virginia
& Anne
& Lizzie/Ophelia
?

my mother's name is Anne,
and my brother told her i was
spending lots of money to
undergo an experimental
treatment involving two weeks
of six infusions of ketamine
through an iv, at a legal clinic,
psychiatrist recommended
in efforts to save my brain
and body.

i hadn't told her, as i have 
my father, from whom she
separated when we were two,
because i didn't think she
had the resources to contribute,
and more so, her brand 
of searing anxiety tends
to exacerbate and overwhelm
my own state, rather than 
relieve it though now i know
she knows, and must make 
a choice, my brother said
ethically he felt called 
to tell her, and i get it

money, and family,
and twins, and mothers
and fathers, potentially
talking about my state
from a place of ardent
concern, i the trees,
dark and bare in the cold,
life the gleaming, sherbert-
toned backdrop we are
attempting to find
balance against