A Poem for Sarah's Ophelia Project

Ophelia was crazy.
I think that sits at the back of all of our minds.
While we read Dickinson, Sappho, Woolf, and George Sands,
While we wax philosophical about
Hamlet getting her down (drowned),
We all, learned women that we are,
must know underneath it all
that she was nuts.

I wonder, then
why our fascination with her?
Why we, who say “Well,
of course I would never let a man treat me
like that,”
find her so captivating?

My baby brother would say that we are all in love with her.

In love with Ophelia, there’s a thought.
Are we all fixated on Ophelia,
her beautiful name,
her often depicted
(and where do we get this idea?)
long, flowing, wavy hair,
such a delicate flower that
one man could crush her with his words?
Do we want her?
Or are we all so
strong
that we are drawn in by her
weakness?
By her daintiness?
By her foolish willingness
to pin all of her hopes on
one bad boy,
not caring that he may never
leave his mother and commit?

Do we all wish to be that weak?
Is weakness, as we tell ourselves
the thing that brought down Ophelia?
Did she drown in it?
Did someone else break her because she was so
weak.
small.
powerless.
female.
?

I think not.
I think, if you read Hamlet one more time,
you’ll find that she drowns herself.
I think, if you read Hamlet just one more time,
you’ll find that she
stood her ground.
Even though it sunk her in the weeds.
Even though she
behaved very much like
the crackhead outside the gas station.
I think, if you read Hamlet one more time,
you’ll find that she
impresses us with her strength.
And we all fear her.
We are terrified.
We do not fear weakness, we who have none.
We fear our own strength.
We fear being the last one standing
for a cause that means to kill us.
We fear what Ophelia should have feared.

But then, she was nuts.