Young Writers Society

Hey there. I like the concept for this poem, and how it starts out with the main gist ("I will not cry") and describes the girl the author is heartbroken over. I have a couple of gripes with it, as a reader (not necessarily as a poet), so I'm going to go over it stanza by stanza and we'll see how that goes.

For the girl

whose name is so unique

it deserves to be immortalized,

written down in the next, great

American novel.

I feel 'unique' is a little bland in this context. If it's unique enough to be immortalized in the next American novel, surely there are reasons why it's unique--what does it bring to mind when you hear it? What do you associate it with?

On that note, why an American novel specifically? Is there something about the American classics that remind you of her? I haven't read a lot of classic American literature, but when I think of it I think To Kill a Mockingbird or Of Mice and Men, on the less rural section you could also think the Great Gatsby, and if you want to push it you could probably include something from Hemingway in there. Maybe consider having an allusion to the American classics in there, comparing her to Daisy from Gatsby, maybe. I think that'd be a little cliche, but if you put enough imagery in there it could work.

For the girl

whose blonde hair

changes colors

with her moods.

When her red, hot fury

and crimson locks

shatter my world.

Interesting. I don't think you mean this literally, but it's very...evocative imagery, to say the least. I think you could be a little more creative in describing hair color, though, as 'blonde' and 'crimson locks' doesn't strike a chord to anybody whose read more than one novel. You're already partly working with metaphors, comparing her locks to fire, but fire on it's own gets boring, and fire doesn't shatter anything--melts, maybe, and you could argue it shatters glass at hot enough temperatures, but the metaphor doesn't connect in a general way.

On that note, 'shatter my world' feels a bit bland too. Lots of things can shatter my world. I can say that my mother's death shattered my world, but it wouldn't properly convey my grief--more likely, I would describe how all music sounds like broken VHS tapes after she left, and how the skies seemed to get darker and starless with urban smog, and how the smokers in the streets remind me of the old X-rays of her lungs. Something deeper, more personal, something only one person could describe to somebody else.

For the name I uttered

half a million times,

or the way it tasted

in my mouth.

See? This is pretty good. You're using the five senses to describe the taste of her name, though I'd like to know how it tastes. Does it taste like blood? Lemons? Garlic bread? It'd be good imagery, and it'd bring the reader to when they last tasted the same thing, and make them feel the same way the narrator is feeling.

For the sparks that flew

off my heels

when I ran to her.

...

For all the butterflies,

who turned out to be moths,

which fell to the floor

and never flew up again.

Okay, nice lines overall. Very evocative imagery you have here.

For all the possible endings,

happy ones,

triumphant ones,

simple ones.

It'd be nice to know what you mean by triumphant, happy, or simple. I'm imagining 'simple' is a small apartment up in a big city that smells like dust bunnies and cheap perfume, where the protagonist and the mystery girl curl up to watch a black-and-white horror movie on an old-fashioned TV with antennas, half-drunk mugs of chocolate and plates of boxed mac and cheese on the coffee table. I don't know what triumphant or simple would look like, those are pretty general, but you get what I'm looking for.

I will stay here,

with my dry eyes

and my empty,

unhappy ending.

Because she's not worth it

anymore.

Very sad. Very relatable.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I liked the poem as a whole, I just think it needs something to spice it up, make it more unique as a whole.

Catch you later,

--Elliot.