at the time of her death johanna was one year

and eight months old she was found in the pool

holding on to an elephant her mother

still today holds very much even though the alzheimer’s

prevents her from remembering why did she the mother

jump into the pool when she first saw johanna

drifting to the little northern rhineland wind

floating on the pool that johanna’s father

forgot to cover as he played tennis

with his other friends maybe as rich or more so

than themselves johanna’s mother today

doesn’t remember much like i said

because of the alzheimer’s she remembered however

to put the elephant away she only did forget

to remove the wet dress they say she spent

days like that ‘looked like a greek statue’ they said

what no one did notice was that she held onto

the tiny elephant in 1958 when i died 50 years

after i was twenty five years and six months old and i held onto

the first verse of a sylvia plath poem and resisted

fiercely with my eyes closed as the whole world

dropped dead even though knowing that the rest of the

poem is a declaration of love completely idiotic

as all declarations of heterosexual love are

and as many things that plath wrote i recited

the poem as i drowned forgive me plath forgive me

campilho the world is a horror the elephant is made of plush

and small bones are not made of honey

they are just calcium

nothing else