Young Writers Society

Hi Lunargirl!

Mailice here with a short review!

You have created an extremely good poem. I love the way you present it and you create questions in me that make me think. I believe you have developed a really great style to be able to present the text here like this. The possibilities of interpretation are endless, at least for me, and that's what makes it so worth reading.

Nobody
The words blur, beneath my eyes, tears falling like raindrops.
Ink mixing with the page, like night and day.

Your beginning alone reads like butter. Your metaphors are so beautiful and sad at the same time, that they blend into a certain elegance.

Like a flood spreading and devouring anything left.
The ink leaching out onto the pages, like a war that can never be won.
Flooding the pages with my tears, all throughout the years.

I don't know why I like the middle line so much, but I think it's because this "like a war that can never be won" doesn't start with the ink, but with the tears, so it has a very interesting origin, which is not hate or fear, but sadness in my eyes. And then it continues with the next line, "all throughout the years", as if she is crying over all those who fell during the war. And yet it's her war that she's fighting, her conflicts that she has to deal with and never wins. Each time she breaks and someone new emerges from her fragments, or just no one.

Changing the pages into something horrid.
Drowning the words, just like my sorrows.

I like these two lines. They seem so contradictory and yet they build on each other. I like how you also come to a point here that can be seen as the conclusion of a trail of tears. You build from the beginning on these moments, how the paper changes, and only here can one guess the whole picture of what has happened.

I can taste the saltiness, like a sea breeze hitting the air.
The pages are my life, written out in front of me, damaged and destroyed, just like me.
I am nothing, a nobody

This hit hard. It is as if the entire flood of tears had come together at this point to form a lake. I find these lines you write here like a summary, a remnant of what remains. It seems like the sad insight of the person, where in their subconscious this rupture arises, where the positive self-perception dwindles and the thought is formed of being superfluous, replaceable or even unimportant.

Always second, since the first breath.
I am the wasted expendable girl, that nobody knows.
I do not exist as far as anyone concerned.
I am the extra breath you have to take.
The extra strands on a string.
Like the words on a page, like a book that's never finished.
Because I am never good enough.

This whole section seems like an attempt to explain why she is there, and what she is, and yet she just keeps going in circles. You clearly manage to portray this wandering/abandonment with these few words. It is very good.

Stuck in a life I shouldn't have.

In my opinion, this line changes the poem a lot. If I replace the "life" with "body", it could also be the conflict with not being in the right body, not receiving acceptance and therefore feeling like a nobody.

Why am I alive?
Why am I here?
What am I?
Nobody knows.

This ending is so split and good, full of conflict and questions and yet also answers. I can see the last line as something good and something bad and I don't know which to settle for. Is it good that she finally knows what she is and why she is alive? Or is it bad that nobody knows what she is and why she is alive? Does the nobody refer to her or her environment? Is she alone or does she receive help from others? It leaves me with a firework of questions. I like that very much.

You have an extremely great way of visually crafting the poem. Through your writing style and metaphors you have created a very emotional and powerful poem. I like how you make the reader stop and think, how you use melancholy lines to pull the reader deeper into a spiral that leaves them alone at the end. I'm really torn about your poem. You left me with an emptiness and a fullness.

Have fun writing!

Mailice.