Rivera

Hello Bellarke! I usually review stories and novels, but I thought I'd come to comment on your poem today.

I'm just going to break it down stanza by stanza (or groupings of four lines! I don't know if you wanted them to be distinct stanzas) and then give some overall thoughts. Feel free to ignore anything I suggest! After all, you are the author of this lovely poem.

Falling apart
all alone
with my broken heart,
and a cracked thrown.

Did you want to use "throne" here? "Thrown" is a verb.

The bright roses,
now turn black, and mourn.
As it decomposes,
I was cut by the thorns.

In your third line, "it" is a little nonspecific--I assume you mean your heart? If you meant the roses, it would be "they". But a little clarification here would be helpful! Your last line is a little disconnected from the rest. I know that thorns are on roses, but even if you said, "cut by their thorns" it would be a little more direct and the relation would be more obvious.

One by one,
the castle of cards falls to the floor.
Leaving none
of the lives there were before.

I love the imagery in the first two lines! It's a really nice picture. In the last two, however, I'm a little confused. Does this mean that people are dying, if their lives aren't "left"? I think you might need another word, like, "leaving none of the lives untouched" or "leaving none of the lives unchanged". As it's written now, the meaning is a little obscure and putting a little more detail in there could help you out!

Wiping away the mascara,
that runs down my red cheeks,
Looking down at the rivera,
and around at all the 'freaks.'

Question that you don't necessarily have to answer: who are all the 'freaks'? Are there other people around to witness this? Perhaps the narrator is considering herself a freak, but does this mean there are others like there? A little mysterious.

This is how it ends,
with me falling for hours,
into the cold, cold water,
not surfacing.

Oof. Major thoughts here. The rivera only came into play during the last stanza, so I had no idea of the depth of this brokenness. I like the thought that you can't tell what's going to happen when you begin the poem, but maybe you could escalate it a little more throughout to reach this big climax. But I also really think that this is one of your most descriptive stanzas! It's got some really powerful imagery and emotions fueling it. One last thought is the rhyme scheme--you can feel free to leave it behind in your last stanza, but you've built such a pattern that this feels like it was abandonment of the rhymes without much purpose to it. (I'm unsure how you would do that, though)

Overall, very nice poem! I can feel the pain and brokenness. I think that you could play with making some of your early lines a little longer (unless you want to stick with your short and concise style!) and drop some more emotion- and description-heavy words, just a few more unique adjectives to really make the poem pop. Good job with your writing! I liked this a lot.

-Q