[Glenn Wright]

I’m impressed by the delicate balance you strike between tenderness and bitterness. The speaker seems to be describing a relationship based on negatives—things not done, said, or given—but nevertheless sincere and loving on his side. It struck me as an inversion of Elizabeth B. Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee? Let me count the ways.” The mournful /ō/ assonance in the octet and the rather sinister effect of images like “empty stores,” and “future bones” plays against the forced cheerfulness of the speaker’s excited, “Me first.”

Like Carl, I’m not quite sure what to make of the roads, stores, and bones, but I’m thinking that the gift leading to “homely roads” might have made their domestic life happier—a nice piece of furniture, perhaps. The “empty stores,” which are empty because they are imaginary, might have held “festive” food like prime rib or ham that would have been quickly turned into a pile of bones. The speaker seems to be remembering a now-ended relationship that seemed to thrive on affluence and the giving of meaningless gifts. He realizes now that the gifts were just a way to avoid really sharing themselves with each other. They filled their loneliness with objects, but now he realizes, “The more / we gave, the more we sacrificed alone.”
I really enjoyed your poem, Simon. You packed a lot into it.
Glenn