OOOOOFF </3 This is a lot of emotion! I think a lot of people can resonate with the themes of falling out of love with someone, and I think that you cover the topic in a very authentic, genuine, and new way. Here's some of my thoughts:
Story of the Poem
I understood this poem to be about a speaker who has gone through a series of falling in love with 'the wrong people' and they are really feeling a lot of self-doubt about themselves now as they realize the latest person that they've fallen out of love with. They no longer love someone who they once did and are processing the painfulness of that change in feelings. While they no longer love the person they still feel a lot of emotion towards them, or at least emotion towards the loss of relationship. I think this is hitting an experience that I haven't read a lot of poetry about, but you handle it really well - mostly in just dropping a few 'truth bombs' about the messiness of these mixed feelings of falling out of love.
I think your strongest aspects are digging into the emotions of the speaker and the contrast of feelings between how they used to feel and how they now feel - I think while some of the metaphors in here add a little bit more poetry feeling to the piece, that they would do better if they were a bit more connected.
Mixed Metaphors
So at a few different points you dig into imagery and metaphor
-> Tears
-> Dreams
-> Warped Glasses
-> Hope in a Palm / beaten up
-> Tallys
-> Red Flags
-> Fixing
^^ Some of these are pretty common love / love-loss images / metaphors so it is tricky to make them sound new. Right now those different images have a little difficulty connecting together to tell one complete story. (ie. what do the tears have to do with tallies, what do the glasses have to do with hope etc - there are connections that could be inferred, but they're not quite in the poem yet) I think this poem could go to the next level if you really focused a bit more into just a couple of these images, or connected some of the ones you have. For instance - you could focus in on the metaphor of clear sight -> that could link in to the tears obscuring vision, the warped glasses, and the red flags and hyperfixation even if all linked by that sight motif. Or you could go with more of a night motif with the pillows / dreams / dig into the metaphor of "night / darkness" etc. There are different ways to link up images you use, but I think that can be a great method for making your poem even more layered for readers. Just something to think about!
Clarity of Message
For me the most difficult part of the poem to understand was the personification of hope in stanza 4 - > it was hard to keep track of if hope was the "she" being referenced, or if the speaker was speaking about themselves suddenly in third person. I'm not quite sure about this stanza -> if you think it's really important to the overall message to keep in, maybe hope could be capitalized to give readers a clue it's going to be personified or a little more clarity could be added there.
I also found the last three lines a little difficult to understand.
i can't tell you to become better because i love you,
i have to say it's because
i once did.
is the person better because they loved them, or they should get better because they once loved them, or just because they loved them? are they unable to say it because it's not possible, or because it's emotionally hard or because they once loved them? Not sure the emphasis of this sentence or how it's linking in with the rest.
Grammar / Flow
You did pretty good editing for typos! Small grammatical fix: "its a gentleman in your skin." & also "its the same as love-" -> should have "it's" as the contraction of "it is".
Usually conventionally "goddamnit" is spelled with an "n" rather than "goddamit" but maybe you were spelling it that way to soften it a bit? not sure, but thought I'd point out!
Overall I found the flow of the poem to read pretty smoothly, I thought the line breaks and stanza breaks hit at natural breaking points, and you kept the lines fairly consistent while also sticking to a single method for punctuation that kept the flow easy-going and easy to read.
Some of your most powerful lines...
Here's some of the lines, where I thought this really went into some very hard-hitting and interesting territory, because they were just really excellent emotional insights.
and i thought love was a choice,
but i didn't think losing it was as well.
^ Great observation, I've never heard it phrased that way before that while we choose to love we also choose to not love. Great line break there too, and a good line to end a stanza on (kind of like a pause and mic drop).
before i knew myself,
the only thing i knew was that i loved you.
OUCH. UM WHAT!?! This is such an intense observation that the speaker at one point didn't know themselves apart from the love they felt for the other person - it indicates a sort of messy-love, and really communicates how much more this heart-break probably hits.
my only red flag was loving you for as long as i did.
^ This is a really interesting line because I'm not sure if it means the speaker's only red flag about themself or the red flag about their former love is that they loved the person. And I love the ambiguity as well as the twist on what we normally would consider a "red flag" .
You've got some really hard-hitting lines in this poem that I think will make readers pause and think. Your writing inspires emotion and empathy, and is always enjoyable to read the different feelings and situations that you tackle.
Thanks for writing, I enjoyed this one! Let me know if you had any questions about my review.
alliyah
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