When I read this poem, I initially thought it was a plea. The first stanzas served as reminders of the comfort and enjoyment found in the pairing's relationship. In lines 39 and 40, when she discusses the "broken necklace of good gold you brought from Kuwait" (Ritche,842) I saw it as a declarations of how good the man was to her, and she was undeserving of it. Then, I perceived "the strangely tailored shirt left by a former lover..." (Ritche, 842) as her admission to cheating on him. The following three stanzas, consequently, served as her begging for him to stay with her. I assumed when her significant other went to Kuwait she cheated on him with another. One of the points that supported this ideology is found when the speaker is describing the contents of her laundry. Many of the articles are ruined or serve no purpose ("uncouple socks"), yet she refuses to rid of them. Similarly, her relationship was now broken and possibly beyond repair leading her confess how terrible her life would be without her lover. However, in this analysis, I missed one supremely important word as the speaker describes the shirt.
"left by a former lover..."
Here, the word former served as an allusion to a relationship far in the past. She is showing how perfectly imperfect her life has been with this man and how she does not know how she would live without him.
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