ABOUT: This is an assignment from Creative Writing senior year. It's a found poem - basically a poem consisting only of lines from the book - from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It's a good book, you should read it. Click here to read more poems.

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Bell Jar
I knew something was wrong with me that summer.
I was supposed to be having the time of my life
But I couldn’t get myself to react.
I felt very still and very empty
The way the eye of a tornado must feel
Moving dully along in the middle
Of the surrounding hullabaloo.

After that I felt safer.
Dust as dust as dust.
“The perfect setup of a true neurotic.”
I had nothing to look forward to.
I wondered what terrible thing it was
That I had done.

You’ll never get anywhere like that.
My case was incurable.
The silence drew off
Then, it gathered itself and rushed me to sleep.
“I tried to kill myself”.

If I was going to fall
I would hang onto my small comforts
As long as I possibly could.
“We’ll just pretend it was a bad dream.”
To the person in the bell jar
The world itself is the bad dream.
I was perfectly free.
I am, I am, I am.