Light at the End of the Tunnel

"Waiting for my Clothes" by Leanne O'Sullivan is a poem that captures my attention because it confused me at first, and the reason the author is in the hospital is still a mystery to me. The author is in the hospital waiting for her turn to see a doctor, and she says, “The day the doctors and nurses are having their weekly patient interviews, I sit waiting my turn outside the office . . .” (1-2). At first I thought she just visiting the hospital for an appointment, but when I continued reading the poem I find out that she is wearing a hospital gown. Then I understood that she is in the hospital because she’s sick. But what kind of sickness does she have?

Then while reading the poem, the author mentions “They have taken everything that thought should be taken-my clothes, my books, my music . . .” (6-8). She uses the words “they thought should be taken” to reveal that she is in the hospital, but not a regular hospital. She is in a mental institution or rehab, and the doctors want to make her better, but for some reason it is necessary to take everything that she possesses in order to make her well. This confuses me because I thought that they took everything away from her because she may want to harm herself.

The doctors continue and tell her “Wait a few days, and if you’re good you can have your things back” (11-12). I then realized that she did something bad that she is not supposed to do, and the doctors are punishing her in order to change her behavior. The author continued and said, “taking my soul from between my ribs and leafing through the pages of my thoughts, as if they were reading my palms and my name beneath them like a confession” (17-18). This reveals that the doctor found something like a journal and started reading her secret life. She is very helpless and she could not take control over the situation against the doctors digging into her life.

She is very vulnerable and compares herself to a naked baby by saying, “I think of those doctors knowing me naked, holding me by my spine . . . the way [people] would hold a baby . . .” (14-16). The doctors find out something about her and she is very defensive and only the doctors have the decision in order to treat her and make her well.

Then the author continued the poem by saying, “owning this girl, claiming this world of blackness and lightness and death and birth” (21-23). She is living in a world, fighting against the bad things that have happened in her life in order to see light at the end of the tunnel. Her life is in the hands of the doctors the same way when she was born. She either lives or dies in the doctor’s hands.

She is in a mental institution or a rehabilitation facility, and I could not figure out what she is doing there. Could it be because she is doing drugs and she is killing her body, or does she have a deep problem with herself by denying the person she is and doing things that make her sick? At the end of the poem she says, “Like dreams, my clothes come out of their boxes” (32). Finally, she is cured or she accepts the life that she was previously living is not good for her. She understands and now can see “how the sun moves” (29). That means that she found the light at the end of the tunnel and she frees herself from the illness that she had.

The End of Once Happy Stories

In the book of 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day by Billy Collins, two poems that are very similar to each other “The Albatross” by Kate Bass and “Ever After” by Joyce Sutphen. Both of these poems have an author that is a woman facing the reality of a broken relationship. The author of “The Albatross” and the author of “Ever After” both are writing about unstable relationships. The author of “Albatross” uses a necklace as reference. Similarly, in “Ever After,” the author uses a white cake to remember their once happy story, but at the end both authors are left lonely, sad, and hopeless.

In the poem “The Albatross” by Kate Bass is about a broken relationship. The author wears a necklace that is “a blue that used to match” her eyes (line 4). This reveals that when she starts her relationship with her partner, her eyes have the sparkle and shine that represents her love for him. At the time, she thinks her relationship will endure forever like a normal relationship that starts with love. However, her eyes are no longer blue, which signifies that the life has gone out of the relationship. The author also continued through the poem saying, “in a voice that no longer seems familiar, only strange” (line 18). His voice sounds strange because they do not communicate anymore. The part when the author says, “I hear a snap and sound like falling rain” the necklace is breaking, and so is her relationship (line 20). 

The same happens in the poem “Ever After” where the author remembers the day when she starts her relationship with her husband. She mentions that they share the joy in their wedding by “sinking [the knife] into the tall white cake” (line 13). She is remembering the moments where she was dressing for a special day that she was supposed to endure for the rest of her life, a moment where she united her life to her loved one forever. When the author says “What am I to you know that you are no longer what you used to be to me?” (lines 1-2).The author is having flash backs of her life as she feels hopeless by remembering the happiest moments followed by the reality in her life that she feels lonely. The author also mentions that her relationship used to be full of love but now it is like “unrelated persons except for the ex- that goes in the front of the words” (lines 7-8). Their love ends and she left with the feeling of sadness and hopelessness.

The two poems are both similar to each other. “The Albatross” is about a relationship that starts with love, and the author's eyes have a certain sparkle and shine. In the poem “Even After,” the author remembers the day when they got married, and sharing the joy by cutting the cake. In these two poems, the authors share their feelings and mention the day where they were happy. However, “The Albatross” author also mentions that her eye doesn’t have that sparkle when they start the relationship, while the author of “Ever After” mentions that their relationship is no longer like it used to be. These poems reveal the end of once happy stories to which both authors thought would endure for the rest of their life.

A Broken Relationship

“The Albatross” 

“The Albatross” by Kate Bass is poem about a broken relationship. The author wears a necklace that is “a blue that used to match” her eyes. This reveals that when she starts her relationship with her partner, her eyes have the sparkle and shine that represents her love for him. At the time, she thinks her relationship will endure forever like a normal relationship that starts with love. However, her eyes are no longer blue, which signifies that the life has gone out of the relationship. The author mentions “I like to think I am remembering you. I like to think you don’t forget.” The purpose that she is wearing the necklace is because she wants to remember the happy days they had in the past, and she would like her partner to not forget and remember the good time they had.

When she says, “the necklace is heavy on my skin it symbolizes that their relationship has become more of a burden and thus she seems to strain under the load. She picks up her child, yet another load, and holds her in her arms, trying to calm the baby down. It seems she is all alone, physically and emotionally, for she sits in front of the television set and can only wish their relationship was different.

When she says, “I wait until I hear a latch lift” she is waiting for him to come back, as if he is the one that who can make the final decision that would affect her life forever. Through the poem she is in state of inactivity; for example, she sits, among toys and unwashed clothes, suggesting that she has neither the energy nor the motivation to keep her house in order.

This poem reveals that is the end of a once- happy story and that the author thought it would endure for the rest of her life. They have a daughter, and the author wants to try to work out her relationship but when he comes back and she hears his voice, his voice sounds strange because they do not communicate anymore. She doesn’t recognize his voice anymore because probably when they started this relationship his voice was like a gentle man with a long list of promises. The reason why he leaves her is a mystery because in this poem it does not specify or a least I didn’t read it.

When I started reading the poem I didn’t understand everything this poem tries to reveal. I was frustrated and I kept reading again and again. There was a part that at first I did not understand. This is the part where she says, “in a voice that no longer seems familiar, only strange.” But while rereading the poem I came to the conclusion that he leaves her. The part when the author says, “I hear a snap and sound like falling rain” at first confused me, but then I understand that the necklace is breaking, and so is her relationship.

For some reason he ends the relationship. The reality is that I don’t know the reason why he leaves her. But she has a kind of sentiment to her writing that apparently if he gave her the opportunity to rebuild this relationship she will try it. The fact that she continues to wear the necklace each day when he comes home signifies that she still is trying to hold onto the love that they once had.

Overall at the end of the poem, I still have some questions that the author doesn’t answer. For example, I would like to know why they were not happy any more. What happened in their relationship? Has the author made a mistake in the relationship since she is the one waiting? And why does the baby need to “forget” something? Has the baby been abused by her or her partner? I cannot confidently answer these questions because she left out the details.

David's Childhood Life

Response to Stitches: A Memoir

The book Stitches: A Memoir by David Small begins with David’s life in Detroit, where he lives with his family. His father, Ed, is a doctor that rarely spends time at home, and his mother, Betty, is a quiet person that keeps everything to herself. Betty abuses her son David when she has the opportunity. His brother, Ted, is always in the basement playing with his drums, and David is the smallest in his family so he finds a way to deal with his reality. David’s grandparents got married because his grandmother, Betty’s mother, got pregnant. Unfortunately, Betty’s mother’s husband’s family, the Murphy’s, did not accept her, and when her husband dies, the Murphy’s forced her out of the property. The Murphy great grandfather tries to kill himself, and although he did not die, the poison ate away his vocal cords. David’s dysfunctional family makes him feel unsafe so he copes with reality by getting sick, being rebellious to his mother, and becoming like Betty to protect him. He does not like his life, and he wants to change but his mother’s examples of how to act in life follows him throughout his childhood.

First, getting sick is a form of escape from his reality. By getting sick, he gets his father’s attention since Ed is a doctor. He knows his father knows what to do. When David is six years old, David sees his father and his colleagues as heroes. David says, “They were soldiers of science, and their weapons was the x-ray” (Small 27). Although, David does not know that in the future the x-rays that he thought were there to heal his father actually gave him cancer. His mother, Betty, on the other hand is unloving and always slamming the kitchen cabinets doors. She never speaks her mind. Instead, she delivers abuse his son. Stitches reveals, “Her silent fury is like a black tidal wave, either you get out of the way, or . . .” drown in the waves (46). Betty’s mother abused her when she was a child. For example, David and Betty visited his grandmother, but while they are visiting, Betty goes out for the night. David stays with his grandmother, and she burns his hands with hot water because he talked-back to her (90-91).

Second, David is rebellious to his mother. When he is six years old and is visiting his father at the hospital, he knows the rules in the hospital are not to play with the wheelchairs and not go near the elevators. His mother reminds him to follow the rules, but he does exact the opposite. After playing with the wheelchairs, he decides to explore the hospital by going floor to floor. Surprisingly, he ends up on the fourth floor, where he finds more than one fetus that is in a jar. Suddenly, he sees the fetus open his eyes and jump from the jar and start to follow him (29-42). This imagination of the man in the jar is a guilty feeling of disobedience to his mother. Although he decides to be disobedient, his subconscious makes him feel guilty that he was following the wrong path.

Finally, David becomes like his mother at some point. When he is fourteen, his mother goes to the hospital to visit him because she knows he has cancer. David asks Betty if he could get the book that he is reading at home. He states angrily, “But oh, wait, I forgot you stole that from my room and you burned it up” (173). The way that he responds to Betty reveals that he learned how to defend himself from his own mother because she gave him her own example to follow.

As a result of his mother’s treatment when he is a child, he is trapped and anxious. He tries to cope with stress by getting sick, being a rebellious son, and becoming like her at some point in his life. At the end of the book, he is an adult and he dreams that he is six years old again and is living alone. His grandmother is in front of his house in the building where she was locked away because of her mentally sickness, and David’s mother is in the front of that building sweeping a floor for him to follow (324). He did not follow their path, and he decides not to be like his dysfunctional family (325). He decides to write this artistic book probably to face his past and become a better person.