Getting Out

"Getting Out" by Cleopatra Mathis

This poem, I think, beautifully describes the emotions of a couple splitting apart and ending a long relationship. Like most couples, the couple in the poem fight, "heaving words like furniture;" split the blame, "finally, locked into blame, we paced;" and get as far away from one another as possible, "we've kept to separate sides of the map," (Mathis, 896). The poem runs through the exhaustion, the frustration, and finally, the regret. I think that here, regret is not used in the sense that they want to get back together, but that they appreciate what they had now. A female narrator explains that "still I'm startled by men who look like you." They still care about one another's happiness and weep over what they had. But why shouldn't they? At some point they found a love between them so strong that they were married, pledging each other for life. It is only natural that while they both still find it best that they separated, they still have a relationship with their former partner.