A review by agentsab
The Surrender Theory: Poems by Caitlin Conlon

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

3.5

Favorite Quotes:
“I’ve never needed an excuse

to sacrifice myself for love.

I’m a martyr for everything soft.

I confess to you: I’d bleed for anything

if it held me the right way.” 11

“Do you ever get the impression

that you’re on the wrong side

of your own life?

I just mean that sometimes it feels like

a constant battle between wanting it

to feel the same, and knowing that it

shouldn’t.

Okay, so I wrote myself out of the dark

but I can feel it creeping back in.

Is it too late to outrun my fate?” 12

“That’s a lot of love, I want to

say, a lot of snow, but then I’d have to admit I’m not

listening as well as I should because I’m assuming

that there’s endless time to say everything I need to say.” 15

“At 19 I walk out of the room that

becomes our final private memory and think what if

this is the last time and promptly ignore it.” 16

“I gorged on happiness hours before its expiration date. Potential stretched before me like a dinner table.

Life is magnificent just before it tries to kill you.” 22

“I am COMMA granting you immortality on a page when the story is as simple as “you left” 23

“i feel like a papercut that never stops bleeding,” 28

“Which grief can I live with today? I’ve barely been awake five minutes when the question arrives, tail tucked between its legs, waiting for an answer.

This is what I’ve learned

after months of meandering between melancholies:

it’s easier to lick the wounds of a battered heart than it is to raise someone from the dead.” 29

“in a language that doesn’t have the word ‘love’ I say,

“the receipt from the film we watched on our first date is still tacked on my bulletin board.” 

I say, “I bought four red sweaters after you told me your favorite” 30

“It’s been over a year and I still look for him

in everything. A reflex I can’t stop responding to.

I cling with blistered hands and bitter heart to any story, any fiction, any song remotely like ours, as if it’ll give our conclusion meaning.

Or, at the very least, a name I can call out

when I’m fading away.” 34

“The truth is not the truth until you say it

to the first thing you survived.

Joy is difficult to obtain when you most require it.

If my depression answers to anything it isn’t my reflection.

You can lose things while holding onto them.

The symphony of childhood sounds best

when played in reverse.

Forgiveness is not enough if” 50

“i haven’t done this in a while

so please forgive anything that may fall

out of my mouth when i’m touching you.

the firework show making an open field of my chest .

your face, the spark.” 57

“The years I’ve lost to my mind

haunt me like a bad memory.

I’m stuck inside the throat

of forgetfulness.

(I’m still naming my mistakes

after cities I’ve cried in.)

When you take a blade

to your past, where do you go

to bury the hatchet?

How do you forgive your name

for being your name?” 64

“the sadness feels like a weighted sweater

pushing me further and further into myself.

not every day.

but enough of them.” 68

“YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO BURY

THE PERSON YOU WERE WHEN YOU

LOVED THEM” 77

“At the age of 12 cruelty does not know its own voice.” 79

“all love is—

—constantly dreading the next collective moment of

departure, fearing anything that could complicate

returning.” 84

“Everything I have ever created is a love letter to my identity.” 89

“if i’ve learned anything about shame it’s that when you pass it down to your children they have no choice but to carry ittend to a deep

undeniable sadnessthey are unable

to name” 92

“The myths I told myself to keep you alive are slowly becoming obsolete without anyone to repeat them.

Time is erasing you without so much as an echo to commemorate it.” 94

“it’s easier to think of my life as one big epic poem rather than a series of events that thrust me into creativity as a means of survival. ” 95

“I grip the rage, the absence, tightly in my fists.” 121

“I AM BARELY HOLDING IT TOGETHER 

and that gives me joy.

it implies that, at one point, I had it all together. it was there, a full life for the ripening.” 132

“I could write my hands to ruin and still never capture the timbre of your laughter after midnight” 158

“I could dedicate every poem I ever write to you and it wouldn’t be enough.

It just wouldn’t be enough to express the joy I’ve experienced through being loved well by you.” 159