I Remember by Anne Sexton

Reclaiming Presence: What Anne Sexton’s “I Remember” Teaches Modern Intimacy

Before algorithms tracked our waking hours, love was measured by unwound clocks and the warm burn of neat gin.

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 captures a midsummer retreat where external markers of urgency dissolve. Time here is biological rather than digital: grass coarsens to hemp, beetles hum, and shoes are abandoned for months. Sexton layers these sensory details not to romanticize indulgence, but to chart how true intimacy requires shedding worldly friction. When the alarm clock is left unwound, presence replaces productivity.

In our hyper-connected reality, this deliberate unhurriedness feels radical. Modern life fractures connection across glowing screens, micro-deadlines, and optimized routines. We rarely inhabit an environment raw enough to drink warm spirits from repurposed jelly glasses or witness a sunset without documenting it. Yet Sexton’s climactic revelation reveals the quiet architecture of belonging: two separate rooms united by a single, shared door. Intimacy is not constant performance; it is the effortless permission to inhabit the same space without boundary or pretense. Sexton reminds us that the moments that anchor our lives are rarely curated milestones, but the quiet intervals when we finally forget to watch the clock.

As you read this poem, ask yourself:

Which everyday friction in your life would you gladly surrender to experience an hour of completely uninterrupted, uncurated presence with someone you care about?