Tim Gunn's poem follows a woman trapped in a marriage she can no longer stomach. It opens with her reasoning that someone must be wrong, since the pain of labor, love and childbirth should have made her adore a man like this one. It hasn't. Instead she finds him wearying, and the nights pass in uneasy turns.
The mood is bleak and worn out. The images are rusty and dull: wind that smells of dust, a horizon of "tawny sludge," a woman staring at the floor while wrinkles gather around her eyes. She has learned to separate "devotion unearned" from "sentiment prepaid," which suggests she feels she owes him love only because of a promise. The wedding vow, "for better or for worse," echoes in her head, while he demands she accept his version of their life together and can't be honest about himself.
The last line is the sharpest: "if he had died / she might have lived." It's a cold, quiet confession of how deeply she feels stifled.