Chapter 5 Summary: “poem I wrote after I told you I was empathetic”

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary (Complete and Chronological)

The chapter is a single poem whose title announces it was written after the speaker declared herself empathetic to a lover. The poem begins in a specific New York location—the CVS on 14th and 8th—where the speaker goes after being asked not to make contact anymore. A memory intrudes of the ex casually drinking a smoothie “like it was 1998,” a moment that felt both dated and untouchable. The speaker’s response to the ex’s perfect jawline is to repeatedly ask to be killed, a request the ex has explicitly told her to stop making. This absurd plea is interrupted by an ordinary observation: a leaf falls outside her window. That leaf triggers a flashback to a night on a dance floor when a man who always talked about Ibiza called her a fat whore. In the moment, the speaker wanted to reply “I’m a leaf,” as if she were in a play—performing an identity larger than her physical body. The poem ends with a wry aside about her therapist: she can’t tell if the therapist is genuinely cool or just has short bangs.

Key Events

The speaker visits a CVS after being told not to contact an ex.
She recalls the ex drinking a smoothie in a nostalgic, 90s style.
She repeatedly asks the ex to kill her, despite his requests to stop.
A falling leaf leads to a memory of being called a fat whore on a dance floor by a man obsessed with Ibiza.
She imagines responding “I’m a leaf,” performing a role that transcends her body.
The poem closes with a skeptical comment about her therapist’s style choices.

Character Development

The Speaker – The speaker oscillates between desperate longing (begging to be killed, ignoring boundaries) and self-aware reflection (recognizing the absurdity of her own behavior). The falling leaf shifts her from obsessive thoughts about the ex to a previous humiliation, and her imagined retort, “I’m a leaf,” shows a desire to redefine herself on her own theatrical terms. Her final observation about the therapist suggests a meta-awareness of how even therapy can become part of her performance.

The Ex – Only sketched through the speaker’s memories, the ex appears as someone who has tried to enforce a boundary (“don’t contact me”) and who performs mundane acts (drinking a smoothie) with an offhand coolness that the speaker finds devastating.

The Ibiza Guy – A minor figure from the speaker’s past, he represents casual cruelty and the kind of judgment that reduces women to their bodies. His insult “fat whore” contrasts with the speaker’s later self-definition as a leaf—an object of nature, not of sexual or social categories.

The Therapist – Present only in the final couplet, the therapist is reduced to a visual detail (short bangs) that the speaker uses to question authenticity. This hints at the speaker’s broader struggle to distinguish genuine emotional work from curated persona.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Absurdity as a Coping Mechanism – The repeated demand “kill me” is both a hyperbolic expression of heartbreak and a dark joke. It undercuts the emotional seriousness of the rejection and suggests the speaker uses absurd statements to manage pain she can’t process directly.

The Body and Performance – The speaker imagines herself “in a play” or “something bigger than my body.” This motif ties together the dance-floor humiliation (where her body is insulted) and the wish to become a leaf—a symbol that is light, unjudged, and part of a natural cycle. The poem itself is a performed empathy confession.

Everyday Surrealism – The poem juxtaposes mundane details (CVS, smoothie, leaf) with extreme emotional reactions (asking to be killed). This contrast is central to Cohen’s poetic voice: life is both banal and absurdly painful.

Empathy’s Failure – The title announces empathy as a claimed identity, yet the poem shows no successful empathetic connection. The speaker cannot stop contacting the ex; she cannot choose a different response to the Ibiza guy; she can’t even fully trust her therapist. Empathy here is a label that fails to bridge emotional distance.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter distills several of Cohen’s signature techniques into a tight, five-verse poem. It shows how the speaker’s mind jumps between past and present, between longing and self-mockery, and between the urban landscape and the natural image of a leaf. The poem also models the collection’s central tension: the desire to be understood as empathetic versus the reality of being self-absorbed, impulsive, and trapped in your own story. For readers, it offers a quick, darkly humorous entry point into the emotional world of the book and demonstrates how Cohen uses absurdity to make pain readable.

3 Study Questions and Answers

Why does the speaker imagine telling the Ibiza guy “I’m a leaf”? What does that response reveal about her state of mind?
The line “I’m a leaf” is a fantasy of escape from bodily judgment. The Ibiza guy’s insult “fat whore” targeted her physical body; by claiming to be a leaf, she would become weightless, organic, and part of a natural scene rather than a person subject to social shame. The imagined reply shows she wants to transcend her body and the hurtful categories applied to it.
How does the poem’s structure—quick jumps between different memories and observations—mirror the speaker’s emotional experience?
The poem moves from CVS to the ex’s smoothie to the death request to the falling leaf to the Ibiza guy and finally to the therapist. This jumpy structure mimics the state of heartbreak, where a single trigger (a leaf) can send the mind spiraling through unrelated past humiliations and current obsessions. It also reflects the speaker’s inability to stay present or grounded in one feeling.
What is the effect of ending the poem with a question about the therapist? Why not end on the dance floor memory?
Ending on the therapist’s coolness versus her short bangs undercuts any resolution the “I’m a leaf” moment might suggest. Instead of a triumphant reclamation of identity, the speaker returns to a state of doubt and performance evaluation. The therapist is another person she can’t read, and the question implies that even professional help may be part of the absurd theater she lives in. It keeps the tone wry and unresolved.