The Blue Terrance

As much as happily-ever-after is a staple of romantic myths and tales, so is the trope of great love that is unconsummated or lost. In many legends, love is in fact inseparable from loss. True love seldom has a permanent resolution in the form of happy partnerships. Hayes plays with this idea in “The Blue Terrance,” where the speaker is as much in love with the end of love as he is with his lover. In Lines 25-26, he confesses he’s in trouble: “Especially if you love as I love / falling to the earth.” The reader might have previously assumed the speaker loathes his (supposed) failures in love, but these lines reverse that assumption: The speaker loves “falling to earth” or the feeling of despair itself. He romanticizes yearning. If love were easy, he wouldn’t find it worth pursuing. Conflict and tension elevate a romance for the speaker: “That’s why nothing’s more romantic / than working your teeth through / the muscle. Nothing’s more romantic / than the way good love can take leave of you” (Lines 34-37). The metaphor of biting through muscle does not signify literal or physical violence, but the struggle between preserving and annihilating the individual self that love represents.