"My father's arms around my mother's neck,’’
The third line of the poem presents a perfect relationship, the one between the narrator's parents. The relationship between the two is described as being tender and gentle, caring and protective. The narrator's parents provided her with the perfect example of what a relationship should look like and when she grew up to be a woman, she was unable to find the same love her parents had or to connect with another person in the same way her parents did. This made the narrator feel ill-equipped to have a relationship, always questioning her partners’ motives and intentions and never being able to fully trust her partner.
"You say of course, of course so quickly
that you sound like someone else’’
The main theme of the poem is the idea of love and what true love is. The author was exposed to an example of true love when it came to her parents but unfortunately she was not able to find that type of love in her life. Because of this, she lived all her life searching for it and then being disappointed by the men in her life. At the end of a relationship, the author reached the point where she no longer recognized the man she was with, admitting that she never reached the point where she could form a meaningful relationship with the person beside her.
''I let you leave, I need someone who knows how to stay.''
The narrator ends her poem with the line from above, a form of meditation and resolution she reaches after numerous unsuccessful relationships. She decides not to follow her lovers and to try to make them stay, leaving them the option of going away when they want to. By doing this, she can figure out which out of the men in her life wants something serious and which one is interested only by short term relationships. The reason why the narrator has no problem with the men in her life leaving her, is because her goal is not to be in a relationship but rather to find someone who is willing to fight for her and who wants to be at least as committed as she when it comes getting involved and when it comes to finding a person to spend the rest of her life with.
