Raveling

Raveling is a poem about the promise of marriage and the reality of domesticity. I end the writing with an epigraph to Sylvia Plath, The Jailor, “All day—gluing my church of burnt matchsticks—” chosen for its association with domestic tension. Plath’s poetry and my own are parallel in their expression of domesticity told through the narrative voice of the protagonist, female. Moments in her poetry are identifiable aspects of the traditional female role of housewife in conflict with the reality of this role and its demands. Her tension lies between two points, social integration (marriage) versus narcissism (her career as a writer), which are irreconcilable—one must be shed for the other—it is this disillusionment with the tradition of marriage I unveil in Raveling.