January

The month of January in the poem “Wild Pear Tree” symbolizes the speaker’s struggle with addiction. In the poem, the speaker describes January as lasting for several months, its coldness taking an unrelenting hold on their life. During this seemingly endless January, the speaker finds themselves essentially starving, while their cat is no longer even able to remember the warmth of the previous spring. These feelings of coldness and hunger reflect the impacts of addiction on the speaker, leaving them in a perpetual state of turmoil and desire as they gradually lose touch with reality.

Farsi

Farsi, or the Persian language, symbolizes the connection between language and identity. Farsi is the speaker’s first language, however after moving to America at a young age and speaking it less and less, they are barely able to remember even simple words and phrases in the language. As...