Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to choose a poem by Sylvia Plath and write a poem that responds or engages with the chosen Plath poem in some way. I chose Elm. I noticed that three of its fourteen verses started with “I am,” so that phrase became the mantra on which I based my poem.

Identity
by ARHuelsenbeck

I am alone
in a room full of people. I am invisible.
I am unknown.

I am a shadow
of my former self, quiet where I used to be loud,
slow where I used to be quick.

I am a memory
long forgotten, a distant past, an ancient
history.

I am terrified
of the dark, of the things hidden inside darkness, of the dark things
hidden inside me.

I am inhabited
by thoughts, divergent thoughts, fighting to be written down before
they are forgotten forever.

I am incapable
of holding a grudge. I must forgive. I create myriad possible explanations
for behavior that initially offended me.

I am an observer.
The once unnoticed is now a specimen to be studied. The simple is intricate,
the complex plain.

I am aware
of silent songs. A hush whispers expectations. A sigh speaks
a soliloquy.

I weep in the face of beauty.
The Creator must love me, to have designed wonders for me
that no one else can see.

Youth is wrested
from my grasp. I would rather not look back.
Let me forget and move forward.

I am arthritic.
Movement is pain. Pleasure comes
only with great cost.

I yearn for peace,
for a day without obligation, without schedule, without agenda,
without purposeless hurry.

I am impatient
for the next chapter. I’ve been stalled far too long.
The familiar is contemptible.

I am ready—
ready to enter my eternal home, ready to meet my Master.
I am, I am, I am.