Emily Dickinson, who experienced depression herself, captures the suffering of a disturbed individual. The fragmented seek support through things that are stable, thoughts, but are unsuccessful in doing so. Dickinson attempts to justify the idea of being disorderly in order to simplify our existence. She examines a psychological state that could be either a psychological meltdown, a slip into irrationality, or both.

It's a clever use of the word "cleaving." Splitting, separating, tearing apart, implying effort or even violence. She compares herself to a seamstress who is unable to align two pieces of cut fabric in order to represent the idea that she cannot connect the thoughts in her mind, she has no solidarity. Our lives frequently end up seeming like a haphazard quilt of different aspects of ourselves. Moreover, the narrator is unable to tie these parts together in this instance. Any person experiencing mental distress will seem desperate, seen in the narrator's tone, and Dickinson was no stranger to emotional distress.

In the second stanza, she tries to follow her thoughts but she is out of order. They are dispersed, unintelligible, and out of reach. The poem is concluded by the metaphor of balls of yarn unraveling themselves as they fall. We typically find relief from our problems when we let go of the problem itself, which often results in disorganized and futile attempts to treat it.

The narrator describes how her thoughts are like different balls of yarn or that they are not "knit" together using yet another sewing metaphor. Cleave and ravel both have the meaning to put together or gather ' in their secondary meanings. For instance, when you cleave something, you either connect two pieces or cut them. Depending on what you are doing when you ravel something, you are gathering it or unraveling it. This duality illustrates the narrator's efforts to maintain her stability.

Further, Dickinson uses capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure to highlight the impact of mental breakdowns. The first stanza, for instance, employs more dashes than the second. The fragmented thoughts of a person with mental illness are depicted by the short lines. The absence of dashes in the second stanza refers to the collection of thoughts. As a result, the phrases are longer and more complex.

Many writers in the field of poetry have been noted as psychologically enigmatic, but not as notably as Dickinson. Numerous theories have been put up regarding the poet's mental illness. She entered a period of solitude in 1864, when she was around 30 years old, and it lasted until the day of her death. However, she was able to fully devote herself to her writing because of this isolation. She certainly found enough inspiration in her solitude to produce her works of art. But with time, it started to negatively impact her life. Her personal home's living room served as the site for her father's funeral, of which she did not attend.

Poets have displayed remarkable capacity for immersing readers in their brains and ways of thinking, and it's been noted by scholars that creativity and psychosis go hand in hand.   Some analysts on Dickinson's works  claimed that she made the decision to isolate herself and spend her time alone specifically to focus more efficiently on her writing. Yet it should be considered  she wasn't totally isolated, contrary to popular belief. Despite living in the same home as her family, she never had any guests or saw them but when it was possible, she preferred to talk to her brothers from behind her door. She also wrote letters to her friends.

On May 15, 1886, Emily Dickinson passed away due to Bright's disease. The reason for her isolation is a mystery. Her inner workings undoubtedly caused her great anguish, yet she left us beautifully enigmatic works. Dickinson's poetry lucidly presents thought-provoking issues with a style that is enjoyable. Her poetry is difficult to categorize since she uses patterns in abstract ways but her work is now lauded for its depth and distinctive style.