Initially, the poem establishes the speaker’s hope for change and life within this relationship (imagined as the act of folding the sheet, a joint project that ties the lovers together). The repetition of sounds and words in the opening lines suggests the repetitive cycle of this relationship. Instead of rhyming, the first four lines end with words that are fragments of one another: “line/linen” and “them/hem.” In the first case, the word grows through their folding, and in the second, the words shrink, which shows that each moment of growth is followed by retreat.