Through extended comparisons to a flower, e. e. cummings creates a mood of tenderness mingled with apprehension; it feels like early spring. The speaker conveys the deep love, even reverence that they feel for their beloved. In the poem’s center appears the image of “the heart of this flower.” The speaker mentions the ways that the flower opens and closes, including their own reactions to the lover’s desires. The slightly uneasy movement into and away from love is carried through the flower metaphor: the total power of love is conveyed through the paradox in the phrase “intense fragility.” Cummings deploys synesthesia, the mixing of the senses, to enhance the idea of paradox; examples include the first line, silence in the eyes and later “voice in the eyes,” things the speaker cannot touch because they are too close, and the way that “texture compels me with color.”