Noellen is a name the speaker can start but not finish. "Noellen, I say and then stop" is an interruption, and the sentence that follows explains it with a strange definition: love is "the silent saying and saying of a single name." The phrase is a paradox, and the rest of the poem tries to work it out. How can saying be silent? Perhaps by happening inside, over and over, the way a loved one's name keeps turning in the mind. The repeated "saying" loops just as it describes. The line also runs on without a pause and then leaves "name" alone on the next line, as if the speaker has run out of breath and the name is all that remains.
Then the poem becomes a different kind of text, a numbered set of instructions like those for flat-pack furniture or paper folding. The detail is more careful than it first looks. Noellen is a palindrome, since N-O-E-L-L-E-N reads the same in both directions, and the instructions seem to build on that. The letters become parts: N is a "flap," O a "slot," which suits a letter that really is a hole. The double L becomes a fold line, "Fold E along edge L to line L," a crease down the exact middle of the name, where its two halves meet. "Twist E halfway" would turn the letter to face the opposite way, which is what the second half of a palindrome needs. "Connect it to flap N" joins the last letter to the first, so the name closes into a ring. The speaker cannot say the name, so he builds it, and the sound becomes an object made with patience.
Up to step four, the verbs are all for hands: insert, fold, twist, connect. At step five they turn to people: "Have a small child say it." The speaker, who stalled in the first line, passes the saying to someone who can do it without strain or embarrassment. The poem never says who the child is, and that openness helps. The child could be anyone, which makes the saying feel like a gift to anyone. The next line gives the child a new label, too. In step five it is "a small child," and in step six it is "the child," as if the task has made them familiar.
The last instruction, "Give the child a balloon," is the only one with a full stop, and it is not an instruction a manual would ever give. It is a reward, but it also works as an image of the name itself. A balloon is round, like the closed loop the folding has made. It is filled with breath, like a spoken name. It is bright and light, and it can float off or burst. The tone has moved from technical to tender without any announcement, and the poem ends on a small, absurd kindness instead of a statement about feeling.
Formally, the poem is free verse with no rhyme and no regular beat. Its rhythm comes from contrast between the one long, drifting sentence and the short, clipped, numbered lines. Imperatives keep the voice firm and practical, which lets the emotion arrive sideways. The deadpan manual style is funny, and the humor makes the feeling more believable, because the speaker never claims more than he can show.
What makes the poem significant is how little it tells us. We learn nothing about Noellen, such as her looks, her habits, or what she means to the speaker. The poem locates love in the effort of getting one name right. Instructions normally exist to make things fast and easy. Here they slow the saying down and make it laborious, and that slowness is a form of devotion. In the end, the carefully built name amounts to a sound a child makes and a balloon that rises, something light and easy to lose that is still worth the trouble of making.