The Ache of Intimacy: Decoding Anne Sexton’s “I Remember” for the Modern Soul
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.
The Warmth of Bare Feet and Jelly Glasses
In a world dominated by curated digital feeds and the relentless ticking of “productivity,” Anne Sexton’s “I Remember” arrives like a cool draft on a humid night. The poem captures a fleeting summer of unvarnished intimacy—a time defined by “warm and neat” gin in jelly glasses and the forgotten winding of alarm clocks.
Sexton’s imagery of hemp-tough grass and “invisible beetles” evokes a raw, tactile connection to the present moment. In contemporary society, we are often tethered to our devices, living in a state of fractured attention. Sexton reminds us that true life happens in the “no color” of the sand and the shared simplicity of two rooms connected by a single door.
The poem’s brilliance lies in its domesticity. It suggests that the profound isn’t found in grand gestures, but in the vulnerability of being “barefoot since the twentieth of June.” To live well today is to reclaim this Sexton-esque presence: to let the sun blow out of sight without feeling the need to capture it on a screen, and to cherish the physical closeness that transcends the digital divide.
As you read this poem, ask yourself: Does your current pace of life allow for the “forgotten alarm clocks” and quiet connections that Sexton suggests are the only things truly worth remembering?