In “What we talk about when we talk about love”. Carver wanted his audience to notice what he thought and experienced about love. The realism of this work intertwined with the underlying knowledge of the mind from which it came reveals that it was not only known, but it was felt. Carver was in the shoes of Ed, Mel, and the narrator, gaining experience and building an opinion about what love really meant to him. Knowing that it was written in the same time frame as his commitment to sobriety could mean that this piece of literature offered him clarity, clarity that allows the audience an open window into his world. From what we have read, we can deduce that Carver believes that love can be simple and disconcerting at the same time, that love and pain are inalienable, whether they are felt by the same person or not, and that love is ambiguous and that the interpretation must be made by the person who hears