the sun and her flowers

Like the previous chapter, “Falling” records the speaker’s unhappiness and distress, although it focuses on a wider range of memories than the recent ending of her relationship. She also shows signs of coming to terms with life and building herself up again, but there is much trauma to deal with first before she can live wisely and well by embracing to her best self.

The untitled two-line poem that begins the chapter also sets its tone: “i notice everything i do not have / and decide it is beautiful” (59). Underneath the introductory poem is a line drawing of a young woman looking at her reflection in the mirror, a downturned mouth indicating her gloom. In this state of perceived deprivation, she reflects in the next poem, “numbness” (60), that her disappointment in love has made her hard; something of what made her human has been lost, and she dreams of rediscovering it. In “depression is a shadow living inside me,” she includes a dramatic image of the sun, which “fell to the ground and rolled away” (61), to show the extreme nature of her present condition.

After two short poems (“realizations don’t work like that” [63] and “responsibility” [64]), in which she analyzes her situation in a clear-headed way and expresses, in the latter poem, a generalized truth, in “conversations with god,” she remonstrates with God for having created her sexual parts the way they are: “a door / hanging / open between my legs” (65). The poem “focusing on the negative” (67) highlights her conflicting emotions. In “home” (68-72), the longest poem in the chapter (four pages with a one-page line drawing), the speaker recalls a rape that occurred at an unspecified time in the past (“as I screamed for my mother / you nailed my wrists to the ground” [69]). She knows, however, that despite the acuteness of the trauma, it us up to her to heal herself, and she makes every effort to do so. Later, in the untitled poem that begins “at home that night” (76), she returns to the memory of the rape; she weeps and howls as she bathes, recalling an event so disturbing that it seemed to remove her from her very self.

Though the speaker addresses trauma and conflicting emotions in this chapter, she also navigates stabilization and new understandings. In “together” (79), the speaker steps back for a moment with a comment about the “irony of loneliness”—everyone is alone when they feel it, but many people are feeling it at the same time. In other very short poems, such as “live fully” (82), “growth is a process” (87), the poem that begins with “like the rainbow” (89), and “this will free you both” (100), the speaker offers aphorisms intended to help her (and others) deal with life in a positive way. She expresses some hard-won wisdom and gives herself hope. In “all you own is yourself” (99), for example, she tells herself just to let go and allow everything to happen, since no one really owns anything or was promised anything in life.

In between these optimistic poems, however, other poems underscore continued restlessness. In “basement aesthetician” (80-81), the speaker recalls how she and the other neighborhood girls went to a salon in which their body hair was shaved, and she wonders why she cannot accept her body exactly the way it is. In “a never-ending search” (84), she tries all manner of cosmetics to make herself more beautiful but is never satisfied with the results. In the poem that begins with “i am having a difficult time right now” (88), the speaker compares herself unfavorably to other people.

Childhood remains a minefield of difficult memories. In a poem whose title says it all (“how can i verbalize consent as an adult if i was never taught to as a child” [90]), she returns to the trauma of the rape. She was unable to say “no” to the man because, as a child, her parents had beaten her into obedience. She had to always say “yes.” In “the art of growing” (94-96), the speaker looks back to the age of 12, when her body started to mature and she attracted the crude interest of boys and men. She hated her body for that reason. Her mother told her to act like a lady so as not to arouse male lust, advice which she finds hard to accept.

At some point in this journey to adulthood, the speaker lost self-love and replaced it with self-hate (“self-hate” [102]). In “self-love” (105), which follows just three pages later, she recounts how she tried to relearn how to love herself. As the chapter draws to a close, optimism and positivity prevail. The speaker knows she must accept herself (“acceptance” [108]); healing is ongoing; it can never be declared complete. Despite all that she has survived, she is still alive (two-line poem, [113]). According to “the recipe of life” (114), she must go through all the stages of wilting, falling, rooting, and rising before she can bloom.