The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.
This first line introduces the poem's central idea and structure. The poet expresses her wish to turn back time and reverse familial trauma. She also reveals that she is a writer, creating the expectation that the speaker is Shire herself. She believes her life was permanently altered by her father abandoning them and chooses to highlight it as the main turning point of her childhood. Fitting with the conceit of the poem overall, this first line is repeated as the last line.
I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole.
This line strongly suggests the theme of domestic abuse. It is evident from the content of the poem that violence was a constant in the speaker's home. In this moment that idea comes to the fore, as she creates an image (a bloody nose) that implies violence has been done to her. The most obvious connotation of this line is that the speaker has been abused by her step-father, who is later shown drinking heavily and likely pushing the speaker's mother down the stairs. The use of the strong image of the blood appearing like ants works to show both the unsettling nature of her injury, and the undoing of it.
I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love,
you won’t be able to see beyond it.
This line occurs at the end of the first stanza and functions as a kind of mission statement for the poem as a whole. She is writing this poem in order to "rewrite this life," in other words, editing their childhood in an effort to heal their pain and suffering. When she notes that "this time there'll be so much love, / you won't be able to see beyond it," she means that she will comfort and care for her in a way that erases all of their difficult memories. While the speaker seems to know that she cannot literally "rewrite" their family history, this declaration shows the deep tenderness she feels for her sister, addressing all of this hope and concern towards her.
