Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead.
The speaker begins the poem by naming the man who left her at the altar with a cocktail of endearing and hateful names. His position in the poem is clearly one of power; after all this time, he is still the speaker's focus. The speaker's clipped sentences hint at her madness, which becomes clearer later in the poem.
Whole days
in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
This part of the poem shows the extent of Miss Havisham's madness and depression. She lacks the energy to complete her sentences. The dress ages with her, and either she or the dress, or both, tremble as she opens the wardrobe; this indicates that she is overcome by the thought of changing into a different article of clothing. The poem does not quite explain to the reader why she is so unable to bounce back from this great injury, but it deepens the reader's pity for Miss Havisham; the way she feels is not within her control.
Puce curses that are sounds not words.
This sentence has multiple "s" sounds that form a hissing quality; the word "Puce," with its sharp "u" sound, feels like it has been spat toward the reader. The speaker is losing her intelligibility; this loss is apparent in her failing grammar and in her curses that are sounds, not words. Years and years of repeating these curses may have leeched them of their original meaning.
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till I suddenly bite awake.
This moment in the poem is almost explicitly sexual. Her tongue moves from the body's mouth to his ear then "down." The dream the speaker describes, with a body hanging over her, sounds like a nightmare or a bout of sleep paralysis. However, for her, the nightmare begins when she awakens. By describing the person she sees in her dream as a "lost body," she almost seems to perform necrophilia on him. While disgusting, this works as an apt parallel to the poem's blurred line between love and hatred.
