What lips my lips have kissed, and where and why by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The rhyme scheme of this poem follows abbaabba cdefedf and this is typical for petrarchan sonnets. This poem also includes the octave talking about her former loves and how she wishes they would remember her, or she could remember them. The sestet talks about how she is very lonely and the fact that she has no passion anymore.

This poem is about rememberance, with a nostalgiac tone Millay talks about the lovers she's had, and the many people she has shown affection to. She can't remember exactly who they were, or why she has exchanged kisses with, but she wants to know where they are now, and she longs to know that. She describes her sadness by the imagery of the tree that "stands" in "winter" and the the fact that the "birds have vanished one by one." She feels extreme loneliness and she expresses that through the imagery of winter's effect on nature (the lonely and bare tree with now birds). she knows that she has loved, and had passion once, but "summer sings" in her no more, and she has lost all that passion that she once had. She hopes that the "unremembered lads" will remember her instead.