Childhood sorrow. Romantic obsession. Sexy missteps. Heartbreak. With Portrait of a Person Who Pushes Love Away in Fear of Losing It, poet Isabelle Correa has created a collection about the experiences that form us as we come of age. The speaker’s limerence infuses Correa’s odes to both harmful and healthy love with energy throughout the collection of almost 100 poems. In the prologue, the speaker proclaims, “I only exist when somebody loves me,” and Correa’s incisive and elegant writing guarantees that any reader would happily tag along to see this self-fulfilling prophecy challenged.

 

The poems in this collection are propulsive and move us forward in time, tracing the emotional arcs and dips of a life spent yearning for love while simultaneously having trouble accepting it. Almost immediately, it becomes clear that the speaker’s heart is marred by the mother wound – the open maw of pain created by a lack of mothering in her childhood. In many of these poems, the speaker is digging deep for her mother’s love. In “Love Letter in Which I Explain Myself,” she illuminates the relationship she had with her mother even before birth:

 

“I was born at the wrong hour

dilly dallying in the crooning cosmos

of my mother

I was the only 1 of 8

to demand an extension”

 

Perhaps the speaker stayed so long in her mother’s womb was because there’s where she felt safest; perhaps she knew their relationships on the outside would be more difficult. In “Desire,” the speaker elaborates on the space that she wants to close between her mother and herself as she begs, “Forgive me for needing something / to believe in—the moon, my mother, / a kind true god who doesn’t wish / me dead.” This poem’s “the moon, my mother” language harkens back to the “crooning cosmos / of my mother” in “Love Letter in Which I Explain Myself.” Is her mother the moon? Is her mother the whole solar system?

 

And in either case, what does that make the speaker, and how does she see herself in relationship to her parent? With the vibrance and color of these poems, the speaker is a star in her own right. Here, and throughout her collection, Correa is so skilled at conjuring up deeply felt emotional states that don’t fit neatly into any one category.

 

It’s clear that the speaker’s childhood has left some psychic scars. “Forgive Me / It’s My First Time / Here / On Earth” paints a picture of the speaker’s pain.

 

“I grew up in story-less pain—waiting

for a narrative arc to swoop

down from the heavens and bless me

with a backbone…

 

“I let deranged men call me baby

as if their voice was a scent leading home.”

 

Without an internal locus of self-love, the speaker is like a ship lost at sea, vulnerable to whatever waves rock her and taunted by sirens’ calls. (While many of the poems in Portrait of a Person Who Pushes Love Away in Fear of Losing It focus on the speaker’s relationships with men, the sirens in the speaker’s case can also be women; in the poem “Bi Enough,” the speaker says, “[I’m] thinking / about how I love / women. How they / check in. How they / apologize for everything / except ruining your life. / How they bounce / out of a bad week / just to come back again.”)

 

The prose poem “The Bull” is set a day before the speaker’s cancelled wedding would’ve taken place. Her mind ping-pongs back and forth about love as Correa injects the poem with a surprise to delight the reader: This lovelorn processing takes place while the speaker is atop a mechanical bull. “The Bull” also reveals more of how the speaker’s mother may have influenced her romantic decisions:

 

“my mom always said beggars can’t be choosers, and if I’m anything at all, I am a beggar, I have to take all the love I can get without question because another man might never come, or woman, or any bit of love, not a crumb or a speck, and I’d die, I swear I would die.”

 

The speaker believes she must beg for love and accept any tiny bit of affection tossed her way. While this leaves her open-hearted to all sorts of relationships that come her way, it also leaves her vulnerable, without the protection she deserves – and the protection her mother could’ve provided if she had provided more of the love the speaker craved.

 

Sex and sexuality – both joyful and complicated – are a huge part of this intimate collection. The speaker shrewdly looks back on the burgeoning sexuality of her teen years in “Monologue of a 15-Year-Old at Youth Group in a Church Gym Who Thinks She Just Saw God”:

 

“The secular world opens up

like a flower, God’s light

in every pin prick

of pollen, but right as I reach the climax

of epiphany, my mind catches on

thoughts like barbed wire—

on nose rings and sexy angel

Halloween costumes,

Bathsheba and Britney Spears,

all my fasting

from giving head,

lipstick, and girls kissing girls

in my search history,

my body

like a temple, empty

of everything but sacrifice.”

 

This orgasmic poem flashes on many of the touchstones in a teen’s sexual awakening: nose rings, sexy Halloween costumes, Britney Spears and furtive late-night Googling of whatever arouses the speaker. This fresh take on young adulthood also shows the conflict that can arise before someone embraces their sexuality – it combines the spirituality (and restriction) of church with the rawness of emerging hormones and libidinal confusion. The speaker observes, “my mind catches on / thoughts like barbed wire,” a simile that illustrates describes how unavoidable sexuality is as people mature (as well as the inherent dangers that exist).

 

Portrait of a Person Who Pushes Love Away in Fear of Losing It also includes poems that are reminiscent of the energetic sex-drenched love poems of Charles Simic. Correa’s poem “Roses” perfectly puts readers in the giddy lust/love state of mind:

 

“I am alien

to fear. Bad

 

ass. Horny

and so fucking

 

happy I could die.

Sharp tongue like old

 

whiskey. Big heart

like a blue whale.”

 

The forthright horniness and happiness in “Roses” shows just how brave the speaker is. Despite any negative past experiences, she’s ready to enjoy her life and her body; she’s ready to experience every opportunity. With a “Sharp tongue” and a “big heart,” she’s ready for what love (and lust) will throw her way.

 

Like “Roses,” “I Don’t Love You Yet” infuses humor into the heart-eyes state of mind the speaker is drawn to: “our horoscope said we should get stick n poke tattoos / of our favorite animals and now an inked elephant / and a sea turtle the size of a quarter won’t stop fucking / in my dreams.” Reading a lover’s horoscope and deciding to get matching tattoos? Nothing else could more perfectly reflect queer millennial limerence. Using the absurdity of the sex-crazed tattoos, Correa again expertly captures the giddiness of being high on lust.

 

There are also more serious poems about sex, and the encounters described in these poems are so visceral that readers can practically smell the pheromones. In “Picnic,” the speaker’s devoted lust is palpable:

 

“Let my skin burn

when you look at me

like I’m the first and last

good thing

to come

your way.

I have loved you

indoors

long enough.

I want the sun to envy

how you touch me.

Touch me

here

in the middle

of the world.”

 

Unlike the relative chilliness of the mother-as-moon in Correa’s poem “Desire”, the lover-as-sun is blisteringly steamy. In fact, the sun is envious of how hot the relationship is between the speaker and her lover. This cosmic relationship is exactly as intense (although much more satisfying) than the relationship described in poems that focus on the speaker’s mother.

 

But this type of ecstatic love-lust combination doesn’t always last. Correa’s poems about heartbreak are some of the best in the collection. Reading them is like dropping back into your worst broken heart; Correa’s writing is so painfully evocative as she pinpoints the bodily pain of this particular ache. In “Attachment,” the speaker correctly compares this emotional devastation to breaking a bone, then correctly identifies heartbreak: “The raw pain at the end of love / is the rapture of abandonment.” The almost spiritual agony of a broken heart can be akin to an ecstasy, or a kind of rapture.

 

As the speaker loves and loses throughout this collection, it is clear that love and heartache can be linger. When a connection between lovers is broken, it can haunt them forever. The poem “I Don’t Just Lose You Once” ends with the beautifully bittersweet couplet “I loved you endlessly, / I lose you endlessly.” The ghosts of the speaker’s old flames are never completely snuffed out – she feels every connection very deeply, and Correa writes about this intensity beautifully throughout the collection.

 

Following the arc from lack of childhood love to adult love (and lust) to loving herself, the speaker begins to let herself soak in self-love near the end of Correa’s gorgeous collection. In “How to Fall in Love,” the speaker reminds herself, “Hold your own hand. / Keep listening.” She’s challenged and overcome her prediction in the prologue; now she knows she exists in her own right, no matter who loves her. She is relaying on an internal locus of love. She’s listening to her own heartbeat and confident in her independence.

 

The speaker’s journey through the highs of new love and lust, as well as the lows of heartbreak and its accompanying bodily agony, make Correa’s collection compelling and instantly relatable to anyone with a heart. The sweetness of love is tangible in these poems, and the heartbreak is slicing. Portrait of a Person Who Pushes Love Away in Fear of Losing It is an all-encompassing collection that touches on the desire, romance, pleasure and pain of coming of age and learning to love yourself.

 

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Liz DeGregorio (she/her) is a poet, writer and editor living on Lenape (Lenapehoking) land in New York City. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, Catapult, Bowery Gothic, Lucky Jefferson, ANMLY, Little Fruits, BUST, Ghouls Magazine, OyeDrum, Blink Ink, Dread Central and other publications. She has also performed at the reading series Stranger Stories and The Ghost Presents: Literary Libations.