The Truth

Surrounded by noise
And movement
And people
I can pretend
That it's ok.
I convince myself
Sometimes.

But when I'm alone,
The truth finds me.
It grabs me by the neck
And slams me up against the wall.
My feet
Dangle
Off the ground,
And it holds me so tight
That it leaves
Big
Ugly
Purple bruises
In the shape of a hand.
It punches me
Until there is no air
Left in me
And I cannot breathe.
Then it drops me
So suddenly that
I cannot catch myself;
My legs fold
Beneath me and
My body crumples on the floor.
Just as I begin to breathe
It kicks me
Hard
In the stomach.

I cough
And choke
And gasp.

My head spins with the realisation
That I am
Utterly alone
And entirely helpless.
The Truth sits down beside me;
Pulls me close.
Too tired
To protest
I put my arms around its neck,
Lean my head against its chest.

It whispers in my ear.
I feel its breath
Warm
Against my skin.

It says
I'll leave you now
And you can try
To forget.
But I'll be back
Tomorrow
And I will hurt you
Again
And again
Until you learn
To take me with you
Everywhere you go,
Where you are surrounded
By noise and movement
And people.

The Truth
Disentangles itself
From my clumsy embrace,
And lowers me
Gently
To the ground.

Turning back
As it leaves
The Truth looks straight at me
And murmurs
Softly:
If you ever learn.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ok, so I was feeling kind of stressed and sad a while back and I wrote this. It's supposed to be about how we are hurt by the truth about ourselves until we learn to accept it, but feel free to interpret it however you like
I find that when I'm sad pinning my feelings down on paper makes me feel a lot better, and that's what happened with this. As soon as I wrote it I felt so relieved, so I hope you like it!
Any comments, suggestions and constructive criticisms will be very much appreciated!

Hey pigeon3 nice poem
Well, the topic isn't exactly nice... but I really liked it!

So here's my feedback:

Pigeon3 wrote:Surrounded by noise
And movement
And people
I can pretend
That it's ok.

So here, I think it would work better to say "when" first.

Something like:

When I'm surrounded
by noise
and movement
and people,
I can pretend that it's ok.

But when I'm alone,
The truth will find me.

I think this would work better if you got rid of the "will" and made it "the truth finds me." It sets a weird tense change.

I want to be held
By someone,
Anyone.

Personally I just don't think this fits into the poem, but that is my opinion. If you are in love with it? Keep it. If you think it could go? I say scrap it.

The Truth
Disentangles itself
From my clumsy embrace.
It lowers me
Gently
To the ground.

Grammatically, this should be changed to:

The Truth
Disentangles itself
From my clumsy embrace,
And lowers me
Gently
To the ground.

The Truth looks at me
And murmurs

I think this would be stronger if you added in an adverb, or said something like "looks me in the eye."

If you ever learn.

Last but not least, I like this, but there's something odd about it. Maybe try and change this, even though it is powerful the way it is.

Nice poem overall, deep and meaningful. Good job.

Thank you so much!!!
I will look into changing those things.
I didn't notice before, but now that you've pointed it out, the 'I want to be held' thing does seem to come out of nowhere, doesn't it? I think that's because when I start thinking about one problem, I end up thinking about all my problems, and they get sort of jumbled up. Also, I didn't know what this poem was about until I finished it, so it wanders a bit. I will try to make that line make more sense, or I may just scrap it as you suggested
Thanks for telling me what you think! Your comments are all really helpful!

-pigeon