Dickinson’s speaker asks to be given back to Death — not because she ever wanted to die, but because death’s only terror was that it separated her from the person she loved. Now, ironically, she is alive yet utterly deprived of that person, and so life itself has become a tomb. She breathes inside her own grave, a state of being that feels like a slow, conscious burial. The size of this living death is impossible to measure: it stretches as far as hell can imagine and contains everything heaven once meant. The poem creates an atmosphere of hollow resignation, where the absence of the beloved turns existence into an endless, suffocating space. Grief is not just an emotion here; it is the very air she breathes.
So give me back to Death -- — Summary
So give me back to Death -- The Death I never feared Except that it deprived of thee -- And now, by Life deprived, In my own Grave I breathe And estimate its size -- Its size is all that Hell can guess -- And all that Heaven was --