Getting Out

"That year we hardly slept, waking like inmates
who beat the walls. Every night
another refusal, the silent work
of tightening the heart."

At the beginning of this poem, the speaker uses a simile to show the relationship of the couple before or during the process of the divorce. The above quote compares the couple to inmates. I think this is sybolic of many relationships. People get into horrible marriages where nothing is working out, yet they are married, so they are sort of "stuck" with each other or imprisoned within the marriage. The tightening heart the speaker talks about is also very symbolic of divorces in that people have to squelch their feelings in order to get over their partner. When they "tighten their heart", they are doing their best to let the other go in order to save their feelings.