Eventually the relationship described in "Twenty-One Love Poems" fails, in part because of the scars and open wounds the two women carry. Rich sees her lover as a woman "drowning in secrets, fear wound round her throat" (DCL, 35), whose past suffering makes her turn away from intimacy. Rich's solitary meditations about the end of the relationship are included in several of the last of the "Twenty-One Love Poems." In these poems Rich looks at the fourth image of woman—the woman alone—and affirms her own solitude and her decision to live her life openly, honestly, and with risk. Though living alone is difficult for women who have been schooled in the importance of relationships, solitude is likely to be a part of every woman's life—especially the lives of women who challenge society's norms.
