Falling Apart

I saw you with her and I knew it was not my place to intrude.
The way she laughed, the way you leaned in closer,
I wished I could have looked away

You left me alone on foreign shores,
among people who think only of tanning
and the source of their next buzz.

Snippets of conversation floated
all around me yet I could not grasp
onto even one thread.

Their raucous laughter taunted me,
and I glanced across the bar and wondered
if you care about me at all.

My friends were all miles away,
so I clung tightly to my drink,
hoping it would warm my heart.

One shot to make them love me,
two to make me forget you,
and three to sell my dignity away.

A strange man’s hands roamed my body
too freely, and as his lips sucked me in
I wondered what your kisses felt like.

I crawled into bed and composed
a sincere drunken love letter to you,
then wondered what I had done.

I especially like the way you capture the pain in this situation. Mostly when you wrote of being with another person, because that is never good enough. Keep up the good work, and things will get better.

This is very earnest and honest. I like that it isn't heavy handed, you don't have extraneous words, you know, but oddly enough I would like to see it as a prose poem, because there is not a lot to it, it is so sparse.

Here is some tweaking:

"I saw you with her and I knew it wasn't my place to intrude.
The way she laughed, the way you leaned in closer
I wished I could have looked away

Surrounded by the other floating conversations
just out of reach
I sipped my drink in silence"

I don't like "arms of a stranger" it sounds too much like a country song. "With someone else", or something equally ambiguous would be less melodramatic and more heartbreaking.
Well done.

it was very nice... the way you have expressed the emotion was very nice.. I couldn't find anything bad in it... Loved it!!

Thanks for the positive comments everyone.

Kit, I did rework the lines of the first few verses similar to what you suggested. I seem to be naturally allergic to long lines or something, haha. I might change "arms of a stranger" to something else, just not sure what yet.

Hello Nite! ^^ Here to review as requested.

I just wanted to say that I did and didn't like this poem - it was simple, it had its own level of sweetness, and it was honest. The emotion was obviously there, which is good, but the poem as a whole was lacking something.

Take your topic for instance - it's a sweet, sad topic and everything, but you have to admit that it's overused. There are just so many poems out there about the exact same thing. Don't get me wrong, writing about it isn't a bad choice or something - but if you're going to write a poem on a topic that's so used, you need to add your own twists. Make it your own poem, not everybody else' poem.

Allow me to clarify:

The emotions in this poem are what everybody feels in that situation. Everybody wishes the same things, and everybody hates seeing somebody they love with someone else. None of your fears or concerns were really about you as a person. I didn't feel as connected to the poem as I could have. What exactly are you feeling?

(Don't tell me this - show me. Poetry is all about showing and not telling. Don't throw in an emotion - think of one and use imagery to describe it. However, while doing this, please watch out for cliches. They just take away from the poem's value rather than add to it.)

I don't want to hear more about how people in general feel about this situation - what exactly do you feel? Personalize it.

I hope that made sense. xD

So, overall, the poem's okay. It's just a very over-used topic without any personalization or fresh thought.

Thanks for the review Isha. I've reworked much of the poem to make clearer what I was attempting to convey. What made this night so devastating wasn't the fact that I saw the guy I liked talking to some other girl. It was that without him, I was completely alone without anyone I could trust, so I turned to alcohol, which led to me being an idiot. I tried to include more imagery and sensory detail.

HEY NITEOWL!
Well, this poem looks great! I couldn't find much wrong with it... (yep, you guessed it, here comes the "elaboration")
Except:
~I don't really feel like I could connect with the MC. I couldn't feel for her. It sounds too much like a country love song. Try to use more sincere words.
~I do think that it was sparse, there wasn't much to it. I feel, as the reader, like this is something that was thrown together in ten minutes. (it could or couldn't be, I'm just sayin')
Like I said before, this poem looks great! Keep it up! See you soon!