This poem is very meaningful to me. I fell in love with a French man at a very young age, and I don't believe he felt the extremity I felt for him. This poem relates to the physicality of not being able to be with him and hold him, as well as loving him far more than he ever loved me. "Learning to love differently" certainly was hard, I couldn't stop thinking about him for months on end. The pain of him leaving me in America still haunts me. Sometimes now, that pain is dulled and then reinstates itself, which is strongly shown in the second stanza. "It pesters to remember/the lover who is not in the bed," will always make me think of him. And of course we then reach the last stanza, "you say it's killing/me, but you thrive, you glow/on the street like a neon raspberry" how his life continues normally when mine does not. I hope this gives you some perspective, relating it to my own life helped me to form some sort of meaning even if this was not Marge Piercy's intent.
On Dec 18, 2019 wrote :