And then I’ll come across one of her poems like this one, and it will blow my content, self-righteous little canoe completely out of the water and into the next ocean. She can touch moments with words and make them echo as if they were shared memories. Yes, I’ll say to myself. I’ve known that feeling she’s describing. I’ve been there, felt that, and briefly am living and breathing in her written space for just that tiny second.

And what she describes is too tragically real to read twice.

I think that’s why I don’t own a lot of books by Millay. When she hits her target, her poems are too painfully hard to read a second time.