FREE ESSAY ON LIVING IN SIN PARAPHRASED

LIVING IN SIN PARAPHRASED

The woman thought that once the morning came, her house would feel the same as it had the
night before. She assumed that even the furniture and the windows would look as clean as
it had in the darkness of night. She figured that music would sound just as sweet, that
the fruit she ate last night would still be fresh, and that the cat-mouse chase that had
been taking place would still seem as entertaining.
She had no idea that at five o'clock in the morning she would hear the milkman coming up
the stairs that loudly creaked under his weight. She did not realize that the light of
sunrise would appear so cold and would illuminate, so blatantly, the crumbs of cheese and
crackers that had fallen the night before. She had no way of knowing that the three
bottles of alcohol that pleased her so much last night would look so somber in the
morning. The cockroaches and beetles that slept soundly within the walls of her house
last night were now out among the cups on the shelves in the kitchen. 
While she takes in this sad scene, the man she was with last night is at the piano. He
plays a few notes and says that it needs to be retuned. Then, flippantly, he looks in the
mirror, smoothes out his beard, and goes outside to smoke a cigarette. The woman just
stays inside feeling like her domestic surrounds are mocking her like small demons. 
She goes about her morning routine: making the bed, wiping off the table, and putting
coffee on the stove. She lets the coffee boil for too long and spill out onto the stove
because she is not paying attention and it does not really matter.
By the evening, however, everything is back to the way it was. She is in love with the
man again, but not as much as she was the night before and the night before that. She
wakes up sometimes after these wonderful nights and dreads the light of the morning as
she does the sound of the milkman noisily climbing the stairs.
Bibliography
Living in Sin by Adrienne Rich