Propping myself up at the sink, my face,
my blue eyes bleached and blanched and worn too thin,
dripping and smeared like watercolor paint,
diluted too much, I think. Then I grin
to convince myself it doesn’t matter.
There’s your toothbrush next to mine—a small thing—
sitting side by side all worn and spattered,
not like the sink where I took off my ring,
laid it next to the pink and perfumed soaps
you used to have before the baby came.
Our words have rubbed and rubbed away at hope;
but it’s the silence sitting in the same
room, dreaming different dreams together—
but I smile, pretend it doesn’t matter.
Please tell me what you think
Sorry, you cannot respond to an archived poemReviews
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It gathers pace and strength as it sheds weight
Hi Brandon. I thought this grew in stature as it went along until the final line snapped it shut like a heavy book closed suddenly. The imagery of everyday bathroom things evoked great intimacy with clear but minimal suggestion - I particularly liked the allusion to perfumed soaps 'before the baby came'. 'but it’s the silence sitting in the same
room, dreaming different dreams together—'
that really nails it of course. Strong write.
I would have reservations about the rather (ironically) watery description of your blue eyes in the mirror, a rather meandering and weak start to a poem whose greatest strength is ultimately its leanness. -
Small things made big...
Just as Windhover noted, the use of small bathroom items to generate a deep and very human feeling in this poem is striking. It is the one success that truly stood out to me out of all the things you've done well here. For me, the picture was painted very clearly, as if I were standing behind the speaker and looking over his shoulder. I also like how you mentioned the ring but did not dwell on it... a symbol that many, if not most, readers can understand without having it explained. Again, not to sound like a parrot that echoes previous comments, but I second the notion that "the silence sitting in the same room, dreaming different dreams together" is an especially strong point in this poem. A very striking string of words there packed with conflicting emotions. Very nice job with this and thank you for sharing!
. Rewarded 8
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Ouch. Loss...
This really hits hard, the images are so concrete and the whole is so full of sadness and regret: toothbrush worn and spattered; soaps she USED to have... the image or words rubbing away/ sandpapering off any possibility for connection or communication... and trying to make it OK when it's just not. Any of us who have inhabited these rooms ourselves know these how these "small things" can come to represent it all.
Almost unbearably sad and beautifully written.. Rewarded 8
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A sadness almost too sad to relate...
I feel as though you've drawn a sharp, focused picture of bleariness, if that's possible. It almost seems underwater. The strongest section to me is "...the silence sitting in the same / room, dreaming different dreams together-..." That defines a distance that aches even as you strain to dismiss the pain with that grin/smile you've summoned up from some depths where numbness lies. Only thing I would suggest is maybe lose the "but" that begins the last line, it might need a word to substitute there. Dark but even so, a glimmer of courage facing down that darkness. MJ. Rewarded 8
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Wow, Brandon. Here are my thoughts in the order in which they occurred:
1.) Holy crap. Men notice bathroom things? It is enormously poignant, for absurdly sexist reasons, to think of a man looking at his wife's toothbrush and thinking of his mistress' mysterious and seductive vials. The cliche is that the wife notices the details of her husband's affair-- the lipstick on the collar, the alien hairs on his suit jacket, the mysterious earring in the bed. Conversely, men aren't supposed to notice household details-- presumably, men could use the same bath towel until it crusts over with mildew and use the cheapest and least appealing bars of anti-bacterial soap. You have turned the cliche on its ear by having the man wracked by guilt over the details of women. You have made the long-held domestic battleground between the sexes (the bathroom) a whole new scene-- more fallout than battle, site of devastation and despair. (Who left the toilet seat up?) Brilliant.
2.) I really love the opening lines, particularly "blue eyes bleached and blanched and worn too thin. . ." That was particularly haunting for me as I once experienced a nightmare that was uncannily similar. I have often felt the bathroom was my own personal confessional-- there can be no illusions in that room. There is us, our filth, and a mirror. Nowhere to hide. ". . . Then I grin / to convince myself it doesn’t matter." Sure it doesn't.
3. I like the art imagery-- the watercolor reference, as well as blue and pink-- the iconic colors for boys and girls, the color line drawn in infancy between the sexes. Also pastels, as you deftly get to in the later lines, "you used to have before the baby came"-- the dampening of the sex life in a marriage when children arrive, when the spare room of the house must be outfitted in either pink or blue. Also, as you have noted in my work, I am just plain fond of incorporating art and colors into my own work. Art and poetry blend together nicely.
4. "Our words have rubbed and rubbed away at hope. . ." Again, since this is in a bathroom, I see this as an attempt to scrub ourselves clean.
5. ". . .it’s the silence sitting in the same
room, dreaming different dreams together—" The crux of the piece-- an eloquent portrayal of what all married people dread, yet know that there's a better than 50% chance that it is inevitable-- the drifting apart. One spouse being driven to infidelity, despite a child or children. If love poems are difficult, marriage is an even more difficult situation to treat with any fresh insight. I won't say that you've contributed anything new to the subject, but I think you have handled it with a great deal of skill, grace, and discipline. The structure of the piece is damn-near flawless-- there's not a word wasted, the rhyme scheme does not sound forced, and if there's a dropped syllable in your iambic pentameter, I didn't find it. Then when you come in with the repeated sentiment of the last line, "but I smile, pretend it doesn't matter." You wrap it up in such a tone that is both rueful and terrible-- it reminds me very much of T.S. Eliot, "biting off the matter with a smile," or "smiling at situations it cannot see. . . I smile, of course, and go on drinking tea"-- that sort of high social satire, very even and understated.
Superb, in a word.
Cheers,
Lauren
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Fully evocative of after an affair, but that repeated "it doesn't matter" seems to hint that the poem is not necessarily about "the end of the affair" - and that's what makes this very fine sonnet so appealingly real for me. Bravo again, Bill, on another carefully wrought success over a difficult form.
It all works for me (and for ANY kind of couples' one-sided infidelity), noted and felt in that most intimate and revealing of rooms of a home. The subtle details of 'blue eyes...bleached' (an ouch of pain there), a toothbrush, the other sink in another house, those soaps in the paramour's house no longer in this one, the hard divisions that a baby brings, lessened hopes in differing dreams...and no, it doesn't matter, does it? Really? That "pretend" in the final line says otherwise.
And the form is very nicely true to Shakespearean style: its rhyme scheme, its developing interest, thought and conflict in each advancing quatrain, then that wrap-up couplet that your sonnet even goes so far as to echo back to the 5th line. That's superbly skillful writing from beginning to middle to end.
Helluva good poem, Bill, for me to enjoy.
Lad -
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Thanks a bunch, Lad, for your kind words. I think you're the second(Pie being first) to suggest that the soaps are in the paramour's bathroom, which is what I meant it to show; but, seemingly, others missed it until I actually thought a rewrite was in order. I still think a rewrite is probably in order but at least I might consider not changing that bit. Somehow, the watercolor metaphor doesn't seem to fit as I don't continue it until the end. I don't know. I guess I'll come back to it next year. It will have been a year since I began this one in January. Thanks again for being an astute and considerate reader.
Regards,
B.
P.S. Go Bucks! Kick the shit out of "that team up north!" -
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You're welcome, Bill. And oh yeh, as a former OSU scrambling grad student (way back in the years when National Guard troops were on every corner, after the KSU debacle) I say Go Bucks! for sure.
I'm glad I picked up on those pink soaps. But after I posted my comment, a couple hours later I thought that those two "but"s, in the 12th and 14th lines, might be a bit awkward. Seems that the one in the 14th is OK, but the one in the 12th could be replaced with something else. Just a thought.
With all my struggles with sonnets, a year on one is mighty speedy! Really good poem.
Lad
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Windhover
November 11, 2007
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