I Made a Mistake
I Made a Mistake - meaning Summary
Awkward Confession, Lost Connection
The speaker recounts a clumsy, humiliating domestic incident that ends a brief relationship. His attempt to reconnect — leaving notes, a talisman, and poems — becomes a rueful, solitary ritual of pursuit. The poem traces shame, longing, and self-awareness as he prowls streets and imagines her damaged car, confronting his own sentimentality and possible love. It closes on the image of an embarrassed, bewildered older man in the rain.
Read Complete AnalysesI reached up into the top of the closet and took out a pair of blue panties and showed them to her and asked "are these yours?" and she looked and said, "no, those belong to a dog." She left after that and I haven't seen her since. she's not at her place. I keep going there, leaving notes stuck into the door. I go back and the notes are still there. I take the Maltese cross cut it down from my car mirror, tie it to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave a book of poems. When I go back the next night everything is still there. I keep searching the streets for that blood-wine battleship she drives with a weak battery, and the doors hanging from broken hinges. I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love. A confused old man driving in the rain wondering where the good luck went.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.