Summary

The speaker admits that she cannot recall the lips she has kissed in her past, nor the bodies that have laid in her bed. She says that now, despite the fact that she cannot remember them, she feels as though she is surrounded by ghosts who manifest through the rain on her window. This feeling she refers to as a "quiet pain" as she thinks of the men who will never again sleep by her side at night (6).

The speaker compares herself to a tree that, though unaware of the birds that have flown away from it, still feels its branches are empty. She reiterates that she cannot say with certainty what lovers have come in and out of her life, but she remembers the feeling of "summer" singing inside her (13). She laments that this feeling of summer has been lost.

Analysis

On the...