Emily Dickinson

Empty my heart of thee—

EMPTY my heart of thee—

Medical metaphor

The heart has multiple arteries—she's saying this person is her only lifeline. Medically impossible, emotionally exact.

Its single artery,
Begin to leave thee out—
Simply extinction's date.
Much billow hath the sea,
One Baltic—they.

Baltic Sea

The Baltic is one sea, but contains many billows (waves). One thing made of many parts—like how one person contains her whole identity.

Subtract thyself, in play,

Mathematical logic

She's running the equation: me minus you equals nothing. The math of total dependence.

And not enough of me
Is left to put away—

Mathematical logic

She's running the equation: me minus you equals nothing. The math of total dependence.

"Myself" meant thee.

Root/tree logic

No root = no tree. No thee = no me. She's making the dependency grammatically visible through rhyme.

Erase the root, no tree;
Thee—then no me—

Root/tree logic

No root = no tree. No thee = no me. She's making the dependency grammatically visible through rhyme.

The Heavens stripped,

Cosmic theft

Eternity has pockets—and losing this person is pickpocketing God. The scale jumps from personal to cosmic in one line.

Eternity's wide pocket picked.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Grammar of Extinction

Dickinson turns a breakup into an extinction event. The title's command—"Empty my heart of thee"—sounds like she's trying to get over someone, but the poem proves it's impossible. She's not being dramatic; she's being literal.

The medical metaphor is precise: a heart with only one artery can't survive. She's diagnosing herself as structurally dependent. Then comes "Simply extinction's date"—not heartbreak's date, not sorrow's date. Extinction. The end of a species. When you remove this person, the category "me" ceases to exist.

The Baltic Sea image does clever work. Many waves, one sea. She's saying identity works like that—you think you're multiple things, but it's all one system. "Subtract thyself, in play" uses mathematical language (subtract) with a casual tone (in play), like she's testing the equation just to see what happens. The answer: "not enough of me / Is left to put away." There's no remainder. No leftover self to store somewhere.

The climax is "'Myself' meant thee." The quotation marks around "Myself" are crucial—she's saying the word she's been using for her own identity was actually just a label for this other person. Every time she said "I," she meant "you." That's not metaphor. That's a philosophical claim about the self.

Rhyme as Proof

The thee/me rhymes aren't decoration—they're logical proof. "Erase the root, no tree; / Thee—then no me" uses rhyme to demonstrate dependency. The sounds are locked together the way the identities are locked together. You can't have the "me" sound without the "thee" sound preceding it.

"The Heavens stripped, / Eternity's wide pocket picked" escalates the stakes to cosmic scale. Losing this person doesn't just empty her heart—it pickpockets eternity itself, strips heaven bare. The pickpocket image is startling: eternity has pockets (homely, physical) and losing love is theft from God (criminal, vast). The scale whiplash is the point.

The poem repeats its entire first stanza at the end, which is rare for Dickinson. It's not emphasis—it's the loop of obsessive thought. She's tried the logic, run the numbers, tested the metaphors, and arrived back at the same impossible command: empty my heart of thee. The repetition proves the task is impossible. You can't will yourself out of structural dependency. The poem circles because there's no exit.