Before You Were Mine

• ‘im ten years away from the corner you laugh on’


  using the present to describe the past and shifting of time
• ‘in the ballroom with a thousand eyes’


  having a good time, lights
• ‘your ma stands at the close with a hiding for the late one’


  discipline, illustrates how the speakers mother was once rebellious and almost cyclical in the way children are rebellious but turn to responsibility when parenthood faces them
• ‘clear as scent’


  synesthesia, simile clear memory
• ‘where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine’


  polysyndetic listing suggests large personality
• what does form represent in BYWM

  4 stanzas, 5 lines, each stanza could be a different memories