Dear girl on the train,
Why are you crying? There all alone?
Are you going somewhere? Or just going home?
Why is your dress torn? Is it just cause it’s old?
Why are you bruised? On your legs and arms?
Why are you whispering? Into your phone?
Why are you sniffling? Despite looking so warm?
Why are you cut? Where your skin should be smooth?
Why are you barefoot? Your feet cut and bruised?
Why are you looking at me as I continue to stare?
Why don’t you come over? I promise I care.
Why are you hesitating? Glancing around in fright?
Why are you stammering? As we talk through the night?
Why don’t you get off? Till the last stop, with me?
Why do you cling to my arm? Walking so slowly?
Why is your face cut? Blood dripping down your face?
Why did you whimper when my arm I raised?
Why did you follow me, all the way home?
Why did you tell me that you were alone?
Why did I let you sleep on my couch that night?
Why did you wake me, causing me fright?
Why did you kill me? Dear girl on the train?
And Why did I not think to ask you your name?
A/N I would like to submit this to a teen poetry contest, so please say if something needs changed before I should. It's just a local one at my library, so it won't be heavily critiqued and might be against as many as ten other pieces. Thank you for any comments, reviews, or likes!
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,007 Literary Works • 672,817 Reviews
Hey! I really liked this poem, it was suspenseful and it was descriptive. I didn't understand why you put question marks on all the sentences if not all of them were questions. Like where it says Why are you barefoot? Your feet cut and bruised? I don't think the second sentence needed a question mark. Also when you said Why do you whimper when my arm I raised. I think this is poorly worded and it could have said when I raise my arm. I can easily tell this is supposed to be in the mind of the writer and I congratulate you on that. It was a very suspenseful and different kind of poem then I'm used to. The girl's past was mysterious and the questions sounded quite innocent and naive. I hope you win your contest! Keep writing <3
Sarah24
Hello again!
I only have one thing not mentioned from other fabulous writers! 
) You could write it like this-
Other than that, I think this is really well written! 
Great job, and keep writing!
I really love this. I really, REALLY do!
"And Why did I not think to ask you your name?"
I know it's hard, but you shouldn't start a sentence with and. (I do it a LOT of times myself.
"Why did you kill me, dear girl on the train,
-and why did I not think to ask you your name?"
Also "why" shouldn't be capitalized.
~Snazzy
Stay Awesome
I loved the flow. Brilliant poetry. I wish you'd used different and expressive lines at the end and beginning. But the end came as quite a shock, I didn't understand the "why did you kill me" part, is it just a metaphor or did it actually happen?
Using rhetorical questions to narrate something is an amazing idea. I loved your play with words.
" Why did I let you sleep on my couch that night?
Why did you wake me, causing me fright?"
These lines made me expect something else, but it came out to be different. Good job.
The title also made me expect something else, something not so serious, BUT I LOVED IT REALLLYYY.
Brilliantly written.
Kudos.
Keep writing and stay blessed xo
Thanks!
Wow man. Nice poetry, it kept me reading all the way to the end. It was actually good enough that I started wonder what was going to to happen next. I thought that this was just a poor little girl and that she was completely innocent, but then she turns around and kills you. The only negative comment i have about this is that it is kind of sudden when the poem talks about all these questions making the girl seem so pathetic and innocent-then you just completely change direction and she kills you. But I guess that means that it is good poetry if it means that you can get your readers to develop opinions and then feel the emotion of surprise when the plot does not go as you assumed. This is some really great work-keep it up with poems like these.
-Bjorn
I think this poem has great potential. if you don't mind I'm going to dissect it a bit in pieces so it's easily broken down.
I liked that part because it got me interested which is what the starter lines of a poem are supposed to do, grab your interest. So well done with the starter.
That's where u started to lose me on the flow. That line doesn't have a rhyming sentence. Old rhymes with cold so you could say...
Why are you shivering? Is it because you are cold?
Or something to that effect. But since you say she looks warm, I'd come up with something that doesn't contradict your other sentence, or change it the line with warm in it. You could also say
why are you shivering, you don't appear to be cold.
Just some ideas..but it always makes it for me when the flow works and to me right now the flow doesn't work. In some places it does, but others the slant rhymes, or the non rhyming words throw me off.
should be followed by the line that says
and Then I would say the line
And follow it with another added line that rhymes with phone. Alone was already used previously with home as a slant rhyme so I would use something else. like
why does your hair look so tousled and wind blown?
Orr
Why does it looks like the clothes you are wearing are not your own?
Ok so next lines
...
The repetition of words used in this way, also lose me. If u look in a thesaurus you can find more words for the word cut, say cut the first time, and then something different that means the same thing the second time. So you can say
Why are you cut where your skin should be smooth?
Your feet (sliced, gashed, torn, wounded, battered etc any of these will work better) and bruised
I like that, I wouldn't change it because it shows how the person engages into contact with the girl on the train. And the rhyming works beautifully.
Great flow, great progression of the story line.
So here I think you should replace till with at. Why don't you get off at the last stop with me. Or why don't you wait til the last stop to get off with me. Either one make more literal sense than why don't you get off till the last stop with me, that would insinuate you are telling her to get off at every stop except the last one. But good flow, love the slant rhyme there.
Here we go again with the word cut, find another word meaning the same thing but not one you used before in this poem. Also face is repeated twice there, you could say
Why is your cheek torn? Blood dripping down your face.
Why did you whimper, when my arm I raised?
This part confuses me because she wanted her to get off at the last stop with her, for what other reason than to follow her home? So I'd change that line completely to make it less confusing. Also, I'm guessing in the next line you are trying to find out why she is alone, and not why she told you she was alone because by pure observation you can tell that she is alone, but the more important question is why? You could say
Why were you so quiet as you followed me to my home?
What is your story? Why are you so alone?
I know where you are going but you have to see that the repetition of the rhymes (unless dramatically used for emphasis) make it seem like lazy writing. So here we have to probably change those 2 lines completely. What I do when I find myself recycling rhymes unknowingly, when i catch myself, I reword the line. So you could say
Why did I let you sleep on my couch in My living room
You fightened me that night, and awakened me to my doom.
Keep it. Genius ending. Loved the irony. I love that we are feeling so sorry for this poor girl, and the woman on the train is as well, and she is wondering everything about her, but she not once suspects that she is a murderer.
And I love to ponder why she murdered her. Could it because she was asking too many questions? Was she just crazy? Was she bloody because it was from someone else she had struggled with before killing them? Like I said great potential and I advise you to keep writing. You have a great gift of surprise. I am not easily surprised and you definitely gave me a shock. I do love it and I Hope you understand my critiques are meant only to help. Much blessings upon you and your writing.
Thank you! Sometimes reviews are a bunch of filler, but I feel this one gave me actual things to improve and real advice! Thank you very much!
I edited my review so it's a bit less confusing, I have since, found out how to post samples of your writing, to make them separate from my own. Hope that helps. Have a blessed day!!
Hi!
I liked the premise. I ride the train a lot, and often somebody will catch my eye in some way or another and I wish I could talk to them, or comfort them, or even just have a cup of tea with them...So I could learn why they're like this. And it's hard to know I"ll probably never see them again.
The ending is confusing for me. The girl KILLED you?
Because you spent the entire poem making us readers here think that she was like, a rape victim or something. Or at least mistreated, in SOME way. What is her motive?
I know this is a poem, and it doesn't necessarily have to have extremely dynamic characters. That is not what I'm asking. I'm asking for your killer to have a purpose for what she's doing. Because she seems helpless, and abused, and weak, and sad. Depressed, even! She doesn't seem murderous, just misplaced in the world. It's like the surprise ending was just for a...thrill. Even though I know next to nothing about this girl, I still feel what she did to your narrator was out of character.
I loved the question format, and I liked the last line especially. Good work. Despite my critiques, I still really enjoyed the shivers your poem is still giving me down my spine.
Happy writing!
~FourThorns
Your poem was really creepy. It gave me the jeepers. At first I thought that this was going to be a sad poem about an abused girl and a guy that decided to help her. I was right, but I did not see your surprise ending coming! So, let's get to the review. There were several places with choppy punctuation that made your poem kind of hard to read. For example:
"Why are you crying? There all alone?"
I think your first line would flow better into your second line if instead you wrote, "Why are you crying, there all alone?" The comma would still let the reader know to take a short pause without the choppy look of two question marks. This same pattern of the double question marks in a line repeats throughout the whole poem. In some places it looks okay, such as:
"Why is your dress torn? Is it just cause it's old?"
This flows correctly and doesn't look choppy because the speaker is asking two separate questions. If the speaker is only asking one question, like in this part:
"Why are you whispering? Into your phone?"
I think it would look smoother if you used a comma instead of a question mark. In this line, you'd switch the punctuation after the word whispering. In my opinion, the line would flow smoothly without using any punctuation mark there at all. It really comes down to your own personal preference. I just have one more little nitpick. On the last line of your poem, you didn't need to capitalize the word why. Just capitalizing the word and was enough.
Overall, great job on your poem, even if it was terrifying! Especially since it was terrifying!
Good luck on your contest, too. I hope your's wins!