Insufficient Reason for Conversation

Sonnet XLI
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I, being born a woman and distressed 
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, —let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

Roughly three to four months post D-Day, when I would have sex with my husband, I insisted on describing it as "screwing." In couples counseling, he would refer to it as "making love" - but that was emphatically not what I was doing or how I thought of it. I was too furious, too hurt to make love with him. Nor was it hysterical bonding - we had experienced a variant of that earlier; this was different. 

I wasn't staking a claim, or being vulnerable and expressing love, or engaging in what Chump Lady calls the "pick me" dance. Some people relieve stress through exercise, or singing, or making lists - I like to have sex. So, at this incredibly stressful time in my life, I found myself eager for the diversion sex can provide. There's a lot to be said for clarifying the pulse and clouding the mind once in a while - especially when one can't stop thinking. And post-utter revulsion, post-hysterical bonding, I simply found my husband attractive and convenient and eager to please - there were implications of having sex with him, sure, but they seemed less complicated than seeking out a fuck buddy. 

He kept looking for more - that I was forgiving him, that I was moving towards reconciliation, but I insisted that we were just screwing, that sex didn't mean anything other than that I was horny and needed a break. And, even in retrospect, I think that was a mostly accurate assessment of how I felt at that point.

I'm sure I'll write more on the weirdness of hysterical bonding and the emotional difficulties of lovemaking after adultery in a different post. For now, though, I just want to adore the frankness and every-so-often applicability of this poem.