Elin Paulson's poem is a string of memories addressed to a lover, each one beginning with the same phrase, "i remember." The speaker recalls a first warm night when a painting seemed to roar off the wall, a figure in red spinning around a small black room "like mad angel," forsythias by a river, a stone with a face that she still keeps, hills, a bedroom, and a marijuana garden that never grew well. The images are vivid, a little wild, and tender in a casual, scattered way.
The style matters here. There is no punctuation beyond slashes, and the lowercase lines tumble forward the way memory does, one image pulling in the next. Then the poem narrows to the lover: "warm gentle impatient / beautiful," someone who wanted only to make the speaker happy. The last line, "& the hurt," arrives almost as an afterthought, but it changes everything. The mood is nostalgic and affectionate, yet the title's "Still" and that final fragment suggest the love lingers alongside real pain.