I Remember ~ A Poem by Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton’s I Remember isn’t just a poem—it’s a haunting key to a summer so intimate, even time forgot to tick.

I Remember

Anne Sexton

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color—no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.

Source

Reflection

In I Remember, Anne Sexton invites us into a summer stripped of time, formality, and even footwear. The poem is less about recollection and more about immersion—the raw texture of heat, shared space, and quiet rituals of closeness. The world becomes sensory and blurred: colorless grass, warm gin, invisible beetles. Her memory doesn’t cling to milestones but to the mundane made sacred—a ribbon in her hair, a shared door, the simplicity of being. That final line, “the door to your room was the door to mine,” encapsulates a bond so deep that even boundaries dissolve. It’s about a time when intimacy wasn’t spoken—it was lived. And remembered not with clarity, but with longing.