Mad Girl's Love Song*

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.)

Sylvia Plath 

• "Mad Girl's Love Song" is a poem written by Sylvia Plath in 1951, while she was a student at Smith College. It is written in the villanelle poetic form and is generally included in the biographical note appended to Plath's novel, The Bell Jar.

• "god, who am i? i sit in the library tonight, the lights glaring overhead, the fan whirling loudly. girls, girls everywhere, reading books. intent faces, flesh pink, white yellow. and i sit here without identity: faceles. my head aches..i'm lost.." journals, september 1950