Sylvia Plath and Jack Kerouac met at a bus station in New Jersey.

“Where are you going?” He asked, and she didn’t have an answer.

That suited him just fine. So they got on a Greyhound and

She fell asleep on his shoulder. While dreaming of death

The world of steel and smog became so small that it remained

Only in his eyes and the cigarettes he smoked to the filter.

Sylvia woke up, unsure. Jack was sizing up a little Mexican

Deciding he didn’t want her. He could cope with the woman on

His shoulder. “What do you want out of life?” He asked Sylvia and

She couldn’t speak. She didn’t want anything.

“So tell me your dreams.”

And it wasn’t like she didn’t have dreams, but she couldn’t speak.

She didn’t talk about dreams much anymore, and she replied:

“When we get to where we’re going, I want to take a bath.”

He just stared at her, disappointed, because he had so many dreams

And wanted so badly to discuss them with her. Outside, it began

To rain that cold, familiar loneliness rain. Sylvia thought of the

Hospital where she had played a gig for a while. In and out of

Sanity. Jack, on the other hand, felt too sane to function. Trapped

By his own normality, and gone.

She came to him in the hotel room with wet hair and no heart

To tell him she was thinking of another man. Well so was he. So they

Lay down by each other, not thinking of the curves of her body or

The angles of the room, but rather of blue eyes and blonde hair

On a handsome youth that would never love save for himself.

“I write bad stories,” Jack confessed.

“I write bad poetry,” Sylvia comforted. He was surprised that she

Was speaking so intimately with him.

“Then we’re quite a pair,” he joked.

“Yes, let’s be,” she said. Her voice was a shaky piano, chimes and

Charms, beautiful to match her legs. He had wide yes then, his heart

Too big for his ribcage. “Okay. We’ll be a pair. Dysfunction

And all.”

So they got on another bus at two in the morning, this one

Wasn’t even marked. Now they were just going to go. Moving for the sake

Of movement, of freedom, of love, of fear about commitment. He

Left her in New Jersey, the summer sunny stop he found her and

She knew this was how it went, but that didn’t mean she

Was going to cut herself off from him. She called him often,

Regular as clockwork and soft as lamb’s wool. He longed again

For the “rhythm of the road,” the sights of flat and rolling

Landscapes painted brown and green and seventy degrees, faster than he

Could think, a speed to go through life with, the soft red haze to

Counter her dark blue moods. She moves slowly through the warm,

Wet-washcloth air of the East Coast, thinking of him, not allowed

To use the stove anymore. But she still talks so pretty, still stands

On her own two feet and tells him, so kindly on the phone that

She’s doing better every day. And he believes her, because no

Matter what he says or thinks or dreams of or she considers

He really does love her, and she really does love him.