Summary
The poem begins with the image of Shire's father walking back into their lives. She then narrates the reversal of her and her sister's physical growth, before stating her desire to rewrite their childhood trauma. She then says she would cut off the hands of anyone who touched them without permission. In a succession of linked images, she describes her step-father spitting alcohol back into a glass, and her mother rolling up the stairs, healing a broken bone, and not losing an unborn. The speaker then tells her sister that she would rewrite all of these terrible memories, adding so much love to their childhood. The second stanza of the poem then recounts all of these events in reverse.
Analysis
"Backwards" is a subtly innovative poem that uses a reversed and mirrored structure to explore traumatic memories. The speaker depicts various events occurring backwards in the first stanza and then proceeds to put the same lines in an inverted order in the second stanza. This recontextualizes them while also placing a strong emphasis on the first image, which repeats like a refrain in the center of the poem. The poem attempts to capture the speaker's wish to heal the painful events of the childhood she and her sister shared.
The poem begins with the speaker's father returning to their home: "The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room. / He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life; / that’s how we bring Dad back." This shows that Shire is likely the speaker of the text, as she is taking note of how she would write the scene in a poem. It also places significance on this moment as a dramatic turning point in their lives. The use of the phrase "for the rest of his life" as well as the speaker's definitive tone in the line "that's how we bring Dad back" both strongly imply that things might have been different had he not left. The use of the pronoun "we" shows the reader that the speaker was not alone in these experiences. It is later elaborated that she is likely addressing this to her sister. It also sets up the poem's use of reverse chronology.
Next, the speaker introduces a sequence of images that shows both healing and a return to childhood: "I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole. / We grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear, / your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums." The first image of the speaker's blood returning to her nose is the first indication that there was violence in their home. The subsequent ones ("breast disappear[ing]," "cheeks soften[ing]") show the speaker moving backwards through time in an effort to heal the damage that's been done. She is using writing to return herself and her sister to a state of innocence, a state predating the painful events she goes on to portray. This idea is crystallized when the speaker states, in the next line, that "I can make us loved, just say the word." In this moment, she is revealing to her sister that the poem is essentially a gesture of love and care, a revision of their shared trauma.
The lines that follow offer a harrowing portrait of domestic abuse. The speaker says that in her new version of the past she would "give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent," meaning that she would cut off the hands of the men who sexually abused them. This moment reveals that they both suffered sexual abuse. The speaker responds to these particularly horrible moments with a desire not only to erase them, but to severely punish the perpetrators, rendering them unable to ever commit these same crimes. The line that follows reaffirms the ability of her writing to do so: "I can write the poem and make it disappear." The speaker alternately demonstrates the extremity of the abuse and the power of her poetry. In the next three lines, she lays out a series of images that further demonstrate the presence of violence in their home: "Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass, / Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place, / maybe she keeps the baby." While these isolated moments do not form a concrete narrative, the reader can intuit that the speaker's stepfather was an abusive alcoholic. The poem implies that he pushed their mother down the stairs, which caused her to break a bone and lose a child she was pregnant with. This is the poem's most brutal scene, its brutality only heightened by the speaker's focus on undoing it. By placing them next to each other, the speaker creates a causal relationship between the step-father's drinking, her mother being pushed, and the loss of the child, all without explicitly stating one. It also relates back to the opening, suggesting that all of this abuse was interconnected and could have been prevented under different circumstances. The subsequent three lines function as the poem's mission statement: "Maybe we’re okay kid? / I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love, / you won’t be able to see beyond it." While affectionately referring to her sister as "kid," the speaker expresses her desire to "rewrite" all of these terrible moments and provide them both with an abundance of love that was sorely lacking in the childhood they experienced.
Shire makes the distinctive choice to make the poem’s second stanza a repetition of the first, but with the lines in the reverse order. This results in her declaration of her intent being the beginning of this stanza, and the image of her father walking backwards into the room the conclusion, highlighting the poignancy of both moments. By placing her declaration ("You won’t be able to see beyond it, / I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love") at the top of the second stanza, the whole section reads slightly differently. The focus shifts onto the moments in which she states the importance of her writing: "I can write the poem and make it disappear," "I can make us loved, just say the word." This shift is further emphasized by the fact that the reader is seeing the moments as they run in reverse, demonstrating the power the speaker possesses over these events. Shire's ability to rewrite all of these scenes is underlined, finally, by the poem's conclusion, in which she returns to the opening lines: "that’s how we bring Dad back. / He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life. / The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room." By circling back to this image, she is making one final assertion of her healing capabilities. In the space of a poem, she can create a world in which things were different.
For all of its difficult subject matter and unflinching depictions of cruelty, the poem is ultimately about an act of love. Shire knows that in actuality she cannot rewrite the past, just as she knows she cannot reverse the flow of time. So what she chooses to do instead is literally rewrite these moments in a poem, giving her a power she references throughout the text. While the poem will not actually overwrite the past, it appears as a gesture of care, from one sister to another.
