Young Writers Society

Hello, alpaca here! I have found myself in this kind of scenario myself several times so I guess it would be fun to read and review it! This may be a bit short, but I like making my reviews concise so I hope this helps.

I like how the entire poem feels like someone straining to get the words out. These lines say it perfectly.

It's hard for me

to catch my breath.

I can imagine the narrator out of breath when saying this because they can't finish a sentence without having to catch their breath. It's a technique that I personally use and I'm glad to see another use it very well.

The content of the poem is quite relatable because there are some times indeed that we seem to feel so down for no reason, but when you get deeper into your thoughts you realize it's thought spirals of self doubt and low self-esteem and you wish to get out but for some reason you can't. You portrayed this very well.

The poem is very emotionally charged, the emotions are palpable from my end of screen and it makes me want to jump and give a hug to the narrator. Perhaps on the technical side, you can improve the rhymes, but emotionally charged poems sometimes sound better without rhymes (that's just my opinion).

Overall, you did pretty well with this! And hey, belated welcome to YWS too! Can't wait to see more writings from you.


Signing off,
alpacaboss

(Side note: if you are feeling this, I hope you're okay).

Hey there, Anayakanwar!

Welcome to YWS. I hope you're enjoying it here~

I really liked the way you built momentum throughout this poem with your repetition of "There are some days" and with your rhyme scheme. I thought that was really effective!

One thing I noticed was that your poem is all in one big block, which I think made it a little harder for that rhyme scheme and repetition to shine. That repeated line makes a good stanza break -- have you thought about breaking the poem up that way? I know sometimes the publishing center is difficult with formatting. One way you could show stanza breaks is by using a "-" between stanzas, like this:

No one can hear,
my silent cries.
-
There are some days,
where I'm hanging between

That way you can sort of preserve a blank line if the formatting isn't working out. There is also a way to code in a line break for stanzas, so let me know if you want to learn how to do that and I can put together some screenshots or something!

It just seems like you've got some natural breaking points here and it might help to have the poem in smaller segments.

I really like the way your poem's structure reflects the emotions it talks about. I think at first, this poem felt quite long; many of the stanzas (or I guess, segments, since they're not broken out as stanzas?) are repeating similar statements about sadness and despair, even though it's in a variety of different ways. And it's possible you decide you don't need every single repetition in there. But, I like the shift a little ways down to asking questions, and then at the end,

I don't want to feel
like this anymore.
I'm tired .

To me, this really brought the poem together! Because the length of the poem and the repetition of all of those different forms of sadness kind of made me feel like I had to go through each of those days. And then you drop the rhyme scheme, almost as if that's too tiring to keep up, much like dealing with this pain for days. And then the poem just stops, and I thought that was lovely. <3 It's like the narrator just walked away from it all.

That said, I do think there's some merit to varying your images!

There are some days,
where endless Tera fall,
when I close my eyes.
No one can hear,
my silent cries.

There are some days,
where I'm drowning in sorrow,
and choking on my own tears.
The pain piercing through my heart
like millions of spears.

In these two stanzas, you talk about tears -- if I'm understanding right that that's what Tera was meant to be! I think sometimes tears can be a bit of a cliché image, which was a bit where the first quote landed for me. But I think you definitely took off in the second one -- you've got the exaggerated "drowning in sorrow," which you sort of take to the next level with the visceral "choking on my own tears" -- so the drowning is sort of literal as well. And I liked the spears part, too!

To me, "endless tears fall[ing]" didn't have the same impact as that statement of "choking on ... tears." So I think that there's a lot that you can do with these images to make the emotions stronger and more grounded. The rhyme definitely helps lend your poem strength, and so do those strong images!

I could even see you linking a couple of these images with the water theme -- I'm seeing "where my heart sinks / with despair," "What is this feeling pulling me under? / All this agony, / makes my heart roar like thunder," and "The shower of despair," as all having some water-related imagery implicit in them. That totally doesn't need to be the theme of your poem, but it could be cool!

There are some days,
where I wonder.
What is this feeling pulling me under?
All this agony,
makes my heart roar like thunder.

I really liked the triple rhyme in this stanza as well. I thought it was really strong!

My favorite parts of this poem were really the way that you built up a momentum with the repetition of "There are some days" and the rhyme scheme, and then totally pulled the rug out from under the readers at the end. I thought that was super well done. I would love to see maybe a little more imagery, but I really love the form of the poem and the way you shaped it! And I think the rhymes were nicely done as well.

Nice job! Let me know if you have any questions.

-Q