First Edit: On my 36th Birthday

[Richard]

Hey Todd, Achebe, and vagabond,
Thanks for the feedback. I decided to give some background info for the poem in the spoiler below. However, feel free to ignore it because the info is pure spoiler for the poem. I just felt the need to share it because of one of the comments. I'm hoping to get around to editing this one some time soon.

Thanks again,
Richard

I usually don't like giving too much away here, but since Achebe did mention her, I will confirm that this poem is about Sylvia Plath. This started out as a poem called, "I will never be Sylvia Plath," but I could never quite get that poem to work. When my birthday arrived, I thought up the first stanza and then decided to merge it with the Plath poem. Some of the lines are actually allusions to some of Plath's work, such as the image of the uncut thumbs. I decided to omit Plath's name because I wanted the poem to have some open-endedness to it.