Child-Sized Hole In My Chest

Hey, it's Serrurie, here to leave a review!

The Good Stuff
- Okay, this is awesome. You have wonderful vocabulary, and the figurative language is amazing. When I saw the title 'Child-Sized Hole In My Chest' I did NOT expect this yearning for things we did as a child, good or bad. And it's amazing.
- Ooh, I love the remorse the person in the poem has! I wasn't expecting it, but it's definitely welcome. This is a pretty short poem but it captures emotion and a story in an amazing way.

Overall, I really loved this. I will definitely be reviewing more of your poems.

Happy Writing!
-

Serrurie

Wow, this piece is heartbreaking and nostalgic but also so beautiful. I found it very relatable and reminiscent. I especially liked the descriptive lines about missing parts of childhood like the "yearning for bedtime stories" and "memorized footstep on the stairs".
I also liked the change of tone throughout the poem. You start out nostalgic and sorrowful, then it seems to transition to some tentative hope with the "you learned how to heal, so you made me a heart". It however seems to quickly return to a remorseful tragic tone with the revelation of not knowing how to love. I think that you handled these tone shifts very well and it adds to the dynamic storytelling that happens in this piece.
I think it would have been cool to see more elaboration on the guilt and the not knowing how to love part because I think this was especially powerful and could have a lot of poetically explorative potential. If there is any reason behind why this last stanza ended up being so brief, I would love to know!
Overall, I absolutely love any poem that can make me feel emotions that the words are conveying and I think you did this very eloquently.
Thanks for sharing and keep writing!
xoxo

Hey there Ellie! Dropping by for another quick review on an emotional rollercoaster of a piece! Shall we?

To start off, I love the font, it really matches the vibes of the piece. The piece itself is very unique and as I usually say, I hope this isn’t based on personal experience and if it is I hope you are slowly healing and now you are smiling when you think about this.

The descriptions are very interesting and I particularly love the line

“ My tears feel like salt in my wounds,
But they also feel like swimming in an unbridled ocean,
Before the waves surrender to serenity “

Hey, I wanted to leave a quick review ^-^ (it's been a while, so sorry if I'm a little rusty)

I really, really loved this poem, and a big part of that is in how deeply relatable I found the emotions that you express here to be. I think that you do an excellent job of expressing the really complicated emotions around childhood trauma: the "yearning for bedtime stories" - nostalgia, the "memorized sound of your footsteps on the stairs" - fear, "swimming in an unbridled ocean" - last of peace, the comfort found in pain and the discomfort of healing (particularly in the sense of the "new" heart not really fitting).

Also, you use a really beautiful mix of imagery, both very realistic and familiar settings like the picking at scabs, and more abstract but emotional ones like an ocean, which work together to express the complexity of this topic.

I think that your closing line was the most impactful for me, because I'm really still working on trying to figure out how to be kinder to myself and how to learn how to love who I am again.

Overall, this is a beautiful poem and you did a lovely job expressing such complex feelings <3

~Avis