You Fit into Me

The poem “Hook and Eye” is likely the shortest poem I have ever read, yet it takes some thought to develop a meaning. Hook and eye is a term for a clasp of a garment that closes at the top of a zipper—they fit neatly inside each other and keep the zipper from becoming undone. The title of the poem has a connotation of sexual explicitness, prior to reading the body, but the second stanza is utterly painful and crude in comparison to what the reader expects to be forthcoming! Many interpretations could be made, but one that really stands out is that the hook and eye fit together so well, as husband and wife or two lovers, yet this coupling is the same that can scratch and claw at each other as a fish hook can take out an eye. Been there, done that—second divorce!
Lauri Beier