Mirror Image

When I look in the mirror
What do I see
A girl looking back
That can not be me

Her skin is too pale
Her face is empty
Her eyes are agonized
And at night she cries

I look in her eyes
I see her soul
She’s dead on the inside
But nobody knows

She wants to know why
Why when your dieing inside
All the world sees is a smile
A smile that is not there

She can’t sleep at night
Her friends don’t know why
She hides her pain from the world
Can people see though her disguise

Her family does not see
All the scars on her arms
They see nothing wrong
With the girl all wrapped and twisted

She sits in silence
Waiting to be found
Do people even see her
Would they even care

I can relate easily to this Poem.

Her family does not see
All the scars on her arms
They see nothing wrong
With the girl all wrapped and twisted This last sentence, to me, doesn't fit in with the verse. Try playing around with it.

She wants to know why
Why when your dieing inside
All the world sees is a smile
A smile that is not there

I don't really like this stanza much.

Overall; I think this is a good poem. That could use a bit of tweaking.

Have a good day,
Danni (Lily)

Hm... this was near perfect. I think you need to work on getting focus. I especially liked your line about looking in the mirror. I think the best thing to do is, as you've already done, start out with the observation of looking into the mirror and expound upon that. As you've already done this, perfect. So let me say this, how about drawing parallels. Sit in a mirror as a depressed girl and draw physical parallels to emotionals and past events.

For example droopy eyes. State the droopy eyes with detail, half asleep and your vision blurs. Then expound upon a specific reason for this. Rather than just bluntly stating that you've had a lack of sleep, you can state what's been keeping you awake. I know several people take sanctuary on their computers and the internet. Make a play of this perhaps by saying that you see the eyes of this girl in the mirror, staring back at you, scanning your face like the thousand webpages she does every night. Empty, hollow. Just waiting for someone to sweep her away? A quavering lip shouldn't be necessarily a sign of sadness, but rather it is because of the girl at school who insulted her new dress. As cheap. And it was cheap because of the family's financial disposition. Which serves as an indirect reason for depression. I know I'm kind of writing my own poem here but I'm just trying to give an example of how you can wrap up a thousand words in three stanzas.

I really loved this poem and there's not too much to review. I think I especially like the length of this poem. It's perfect. Here and there you made a few mistakes. Also, here's a few things I thought could be improved.

When I look in the mirror
What do I see
A girl looking back
That can not be me (Quote awesome opening stanza)

Her skin is too pale
Her face is empty
Her eyes are agonized
And at night see cries (Did you mean she? This was perfect in expounding upon the girl)

I look in her eyes
I see her soul
She’s dead on the inside
But no body knows (nobody is one word. This wasn't very graphic and was, at best, okay. Show, don't tell )

She wants to know why
Why when your dieing inside
All the world sees is a smile
A smile that is not there

She can’t sleep at night
Her friends don’t know why
She hides her pain from the world
Can people see though her disguise

Her family does not see
All the scars on her arms
They see nothing wrong
With the girl all wrapped and twisted

She sits in silence (If you are going to take my first advice about parallels, then I
Waiting to be found suggest you condense most of the poem. However you don't have
Do people even see her to follow the advice anyway, the poem's great on its own.
Would they even care

That's my review.

Hero

Good job sticking to your subject and I like the title.

When I look in the mirror
What do I see
A girl looking back
That can not be me

Her skin is too pale
Her face is empty
Her eyes are agonized
And at night she cries

I look in her eyes
I see her soul
She’s dead on the inside
But nobody knows

The first stanza is a good opening to the poem, and it rhymes nicely. The second stanza rhymes in a different way, and the third and rest of the stanzas don't rhyme at all. Maybe sticking to a rhyming pattern if you want one will fit your poem together better.

She wants to know why
Why when your dieing inside

I think you don't need two "why"s here. Also, the "your" in red should be "you're".

They see nothing wrong
With the girl all wrapped and twisted

I'm not sure if you meant "wrapped", but I think "warped" would sound better here especially since you use the word "twisted".

She sits in silence
Waiting to be found
Do people even see her
Would they even care

"Would" would make more sense as "do". Would they even care that... she sits in silence? Or do they even care about her because she sits silence and people don't seem to see her? Personally, I think "do" would sound better, but that's just my opinion. I really like this ending stanza and it ends on a strong note. Maybe a question mark would really help emphasize the last line.
Good job!

Hi SilentRain,

There is something about poetry that you need to know: Mindless repetition, rhyme, and random division of line breaks does not a poem make.

Now that we've got that out of the way, go through this piece and take a look at how you've abused all three of the aspects mentioned above. I'll help you out with that.

SilentRain wrote:When I look in the mirror
What do I see
A girl looking back
That can not be me

Right off the bat, the reader can tell that this is going to be a boring, vapid work - and that is because of the way you immediately ponder upon a metaphysical quality of the self without even asserting a connection to a tangible quantity. By that, I mean you throw out some weak imagery like "mirror" and immediately punch the reader in the face with a philosophical/psychological statement.

Where did that come from? Who knows. The most likely explanation is that this is the beginning to one long, self-pitying rant about a problem that you have, and this is why you don't take care to build up the universe of this poem before diving into the theme. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Her skin is too pale
Her face is empty
Her eyes are agonized
And at night she cries

I look in her eyes
I see her soul
She’s dead on the inside
But nobody knows

Well, looks like I'm right. All the stock adjectives are here - "pale", "empty", "agonized", "dead soul", etc. You even include self-cutting further down in the piece. This is all cliched and done terribly so that all the emotions that you're trying to portray come across as cardboard and one-dimensional.

This was like reading a medical report on a psychiatric patient. Sure, feelings and actions of the patient are discussed, but there's really no life in the writing. It's cold and calculated, shooting out phrases like "she's dead on the inside" without making it so that the reader cares.

Take this poem and prune all the parts that say something to the extent of "I am sad" without attaching it to a image. Then, start out with one single idea, a seed in the nucleus of your writing. Develop both meaning and imagery within that idea; for example, take the empty face and drive it in an interesting direction. What if her face was literally empty, frozen within a wall of skin built up - calloused, moreover - by her experiences? Construct the world of your poem around whatever image you manage to come up with.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

Okay. This was good. Emotionally painful but yet very enjoyable. I must say the subject's a bit cliche, you know, the whole emo-girl-whom-no-one-understands thing, but you presented it well.

I really liked this one. I did find a couple things that could be improved though.
In this line,

Her family does not see
All the scars on her arms
They see nothing wrong
With the girl all wrapped and twisted

I don't think wrapped is the right word, warped might sound better and portray what you are trying to say better.

And your rhyming scheme. It's not consistent. The first few lines rhyme and then nothing else does. It would flow better if you fixed that, either by making the rest rhyme or taking the rhyming out completely.

Good job

XO Change