Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for mature content.
Breathe.
How can she breathe through broken lungs?
Lungs made of marble catching toxic air,
oxygen prickling through her blood like
a chemical reaction setting fires on the
frozen lakes of her skin.
Veins like wildfire, cracks across
scabbed hands where flesh was torn away
with diamond teeth.
Scars of bruises, unveiled from underneath their sleeves
like tulips blooming in the sun so eager for warmth and love
a child locked away in a room of silence and razors
that cut the lakes like ice skates and oh how the water flowed.
It flowed, and flowed, and flowed.
A mass pile of stained towels and carpets ingrained with tears.
It flowed, the pain, it flowed from her fingertips onto pages where she was
not the child who was failing math,
not the child who was told to stay after class because the teacher had
looked through her notebook, read secrets not meant to be seen;
not the child who was known as a failure. Not the child known as a freak.
Not awkward or loud or quiet or weird or just another face so easy to replace.
Not the eyes made of green liquid sadness,
not the folds of her stomach, not the feel of her thighs
rubbing together like branches too close, too thick.
Not the child who yearned to be seen as delicate, fragile,
not the child whose moods fluctuated like she was a scale of decibels
and your favorite song was playing.
Not the child she was made to be, carved from ivory with willow bones,
sculpted with too many dictionaries thrown at her head
by peers because she got the only 100
on last Friday's test.
On those pages, the stories she knitted
with the intricacy she moved the razor with,
she managed to love herself. On the plane of
ladder-rungged ice,
she could not.
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140,138 Literary Works • 673,032 Reviews
This truly was a very emotional poem, and it is impossible to fault.
The first verse was by far the best, it firstly ingrained the mood of the poem, secondly it started the poem on an extremely interesting metaphor, and finally it leads into the poem without any sort of stumble or bumble.
Very well done,
Take That You Fiend!
Hi there,
I found this an interesting read.
I think it's about self-harming, and plenty of self-loathing, and I think you express it really well with lots of good metaphors here.
(NB: first line 'breath' should be 'breathe' I think.)
I liked the simile of 'like tulips blooming in the sun so eager for warmth and love' - I thought that worked well.
There is so much sadness and self-loathing here:
not the folds of her stomach, not the feel of her thighs
rubbing together like branches too close, too thick.
You express that really well - I think maybe you could extend that simile of the branches a little, perhaps in order to describe a mass of branches changing into a thick forest (you already use the word 'thick' so I think that's where I get the idea from!) where it's impossible to see a way out? I think that would help to describe the feeling more too.
This line is slightly confusing (to me anyhow):
sculpted with too many dictionaries thrown at her head.
I think I understood it to mean that she feels as if she's being moulded into a set way of being and thinking, by all these words and obligations within society - but I could have missed the point here.
When you end with 'on these pages' it's slightly confusing as you just mentioned the dictionaries. I assume you are meaning the writing which 'flowed' into her 'notebooks' earlier though? These, I presume, are the pages where 'she managed to love herself'.
Maybe that needs a little clarity.
If I had to make a suggestion for improvement, I'd say that there's a lot happening here and lots and lots of imagery and great visual messages - but it might be too excessive in places. Maybe focus instead on one or two specific things - the razors, the toxic air, the ice? well, you have so many great ideas to choose from! - and really drill into them and exploit them fully.
For instance, at the end, that 'plate of shattered glass' is another new idea (we haven't had any reference to 'glass' before in the poem) - so instead, why not link it back to your previous mentions of 'ice' and frozen things? You already have 'frozen lakes' and 'ice skates', so the final image could really work and build on those ideas if you alter it to 'plate of shattered ice' instead.
But a powerful and extremely visual poem - good luck with it!
This was a very powerful poem, indeed, and I thought it was very well written.
There's one little improvement I'd suggest:
"It flowed, and flowed, and flowed.
A mass pile of stained towels and carpets ingrained with tears."
Perhaps change the "A" to a "The" Which I think would help the flow, "A" just seems a bit out of place and... sudden?
But apart from that, I really really enjoyed this poem, my favourite lines were definitely the first ones, they were so powerful, and really gave the reader an image. Also your first line:
"Breath"
Was VERY well done. The reader was like"Oh! poems don't usually start like this, let's read on.."
Excellent work, keep it up!
-CFG