On first reading, the poem she posted yesterday seems
defiant, a boast of strength.
But it is not.
The word “strong” repeated twice seems to mean “resistance,”
or something to be overcome.
She implies that the struggle proved to be more difficult
than she first expected.
Something is keeping her up at night, something she needs to
work out, all that has happened to her, and she thinks about night and day. “processing”
something she didn’t thing possible but has come about anyway.
This might mean what she has become, or a trap she has
fallen into, and is unable to escape.
Sleep in this context might well mean death, although she speaks
about how exhaustion is keeping her awake – no small irony – and how all she
wants to do is rest or get peace, or perhaps rest in peace.
But her life does not give her that.
She is sharing this possibly with her former lover, using
the word “we” a number of times to imply a unity that might have been.
The days are “so, so long,” and the nights even longer,
because her thoughts are so “strong”, meaning powerful, disturbing, and can’t
be ignored, and so strong that she spends days “processing” them.
Things have happened that “we” thought could never happen.
“And yet here we are,” she writes.
I am assuming (perhaps mistakenly) that the “we” means her
and her lover, and the poem is written to him to explain the current situation,
a perception supported by the next line when she uses the term “my love, though
again, she may be referring to herself, “but sleep, just sleep, my love” and “we”
are too tired.
She longs for days when she (they) can rest.
But she knows “we” aren’t meant for it.
This brings in the concept of fate and disillusionment, the
dreams she (we) had which might have brought relief – meaning perhaps life
would have been better if she had managed to achieve what she sought.
Then in an ironic phrase, she says the fight was “better,”
longer, stronger than she (we) expected or knew.
“We sleep together,” she concludes, once more possibly
alluding to the idea that the struggle doesn’t end until life does.
Again, dreams, schemes or wishes do not help or bring her
relief, and she seems to be caught up in a struggle to survive, her will to
live stronger than her need to seek eternal sleep, and when her time comes the
two (her and the man she loves, I suppose) will sleep together.
The fact that her will to live is so strong seems to
surprise her, even when she clearly aches to give in and give up. She clearly
feels trapped and doesn’t know what to do about it.
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