The poem opens with a name, a dramatis personae: Kathleen Eileen. Kathleen is the speaker of the poem. She shares some traits with Brooks herself; like Brooks, Kathleen is a middle-aged woman living in a city. The sing-song quality of her name suggests a youthful energy that contrasts with the poem’s more melancholic tone. Metrically, both “Kathleen” and “Eileen” are spondees, meaning that each word consists of two equally strong/stressed syllables; this meter, devoid of “weak” syllables, conveys a sense of power. Still, this prosodic vibrance takes on an ironic quality as the poem unfolds and the speaker voices her sense of fadedness and insignificance.

Even with its unadorned diction and economical syntax, the poem’s first line presents a paradoxical tension. “Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love” (Line 1). The speaker is both “already” and “no longer,” the paradox evokes a living death, and the adverb “already” suggests that this limbo has come sooner than expected. This element of limbo—of indeterminacy and displacement—underpins the rest of the poem’s narrative. Indeed, the second half of the first line presents a similar tension through a dichotomized experience: “lechery or love” (Line 1).