Whether physical or emotional, abusive relationships are damaging to one’s health. “The longer a woman remains in an abusive relationship, the more effort she exerts to make the relationship function, and the more likely she will “justify” her past efforts with continued efforts to make the relationship work” (Barbour & Strube,788). Both poems, “Why Can’t I Leave You?” by Ai and Jo Carson’s “I Cannot Remember All the Times …”, express the internal conflict the narrators go through while facing two different types of abuse in relationships. The mindsets of the narrators differ when it comes to how they handle their partner’s abuse. The use of imagery, metaphors, and description, help convey the damage of the situations.
In the poem “Why Can’t I Leave You?”, the narrator remains indecisive with her decision to leave the man who she loves. The abuse in the narrator’s relationship is more emotional as she describes how she is constantly putting the man she loves before herself:
I pick up my suitcase and set it down, as I try to leave you again. I smooth the hair back from your forehead. I think with your laziness and the drought too,
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In the poem “Why Can’t Leave You?”, the narrator normalizes her relationship. She justifies it as,” I know we can’t give each other any more or any less than what we have. There is safety in that, so much that I can never get past the packing” (Ai, 762). This conveys that she’s been through this for so long now that she’s learned to look passed everything that has happened just to seek comfort in her relationship. Whereas, in the poem “I Cannot Remember All the Times…”, the narrator begins to give other women advice about the kind of man her partner is. As she giving the advice, she is also going over how the physical and emotional abuse in her relationship started. The narrator ends the poem with a powerful