the fear of drowning in gravity

Hey LadySpark! Long time no review.

That's changing now.

So I really liked how you started this poem out diving directly into a simile. The voice in this poem is very good and you've got the flow just choppy enough that it feels like we're really in this situation. The conversational tone highlights the pleading nature of the words and provides us with a great platform for diving into this world.

Now onto the vegetables and meat of this review. I really think that you have only one place that needs improvement, and that's the metaphor, surprisingly enough. You start out with the relationship being a river, but you end that metaphor so quickly that it should have just been changed all together.

The reason I say this is because while it provides us with a juxtaposition of a "lost" feeling and the first line of the third stanza when you jump from the river in the first stanza, and the wind in the second stanza, it really doesn't provide enough of a purpose in the poem to be necessary. Right now you start out with talking about the river being the lover, and the speaker being swept away by the current, but that only lasts for the first stanza. That means the first stanza doesn't connect with the rest of the poem because of the content of the story. If you switch it from a river, to something deadly or devastating like a wind wall, then you're going to have the first stanza connected with the rest of the stanzas and the same symbolism all the way through. We can then get to the real meaning of the first line of the third stanza.

It no longer becomes a sort of jest you're playing with the reader saying "I know I just switched metaphors and you're lost, right? ^.-" and becomes what it truly is "You've let me go and I've been lost to the torrent of your life" which can be a heartbreaking moment in your poem.

Aside from that, I really don't think much needs improvement. Some of the areas feel a little out-classed than others, like when you're saying "honey" and so forth it feels sort of like a mixed identity with the person saying the rest of the poem, but you have that pretty much taken care of with how you separated the stanzas with space as well as stanza to stanza. That's just due to the types of words you chose to use between the two. The one seems more like just two people talking, while the longer stanzas are very poetic and use words like "flowing" and "sand paper tongue" which is very different from calling something "stupid" because stupid is more of a tantrum word and flowing is a smooth rushing that usually accompanies ebbing.

So clean up the first stanza, and take a look at the types of words you used to make sure that's the result you were looking for. Otherwise, it was lovely. It didn't make me cry, but I could sense the emotions and hear the voice of the reader which is an accomplishment.

-Aley

I shall keep my personal feelings aside to address the poem, and what there is as opposed to what I see. At least, that will be my mission for the moment. Then I shall move onto how I feel about it.

Your structure for this poem is varied and has some meaning behind it- possibly relating to the title of your piece. As drowning in gravity is impossible, this evokes an image of paranoia. The lack of punctuation generates an image similar to that of ee cummings' works, which seems to dress the poem in a sense of modesty and understates the mood. It thus makes the overall tone a lot more intimate. At the same time, it can sometimes be a very cold poem. Your second chorus, as such, appears to be incredibly negative and rejects the reader despite their best efforts to comfort the speaker.

It is very conversational, too. The constant adjectives and playful words- "sweetheart", "darling"- could either be sarcastic or endearing. However, they usually come before a rejection, and can come across as apologetic. What's more, these words take new meanings throughout. Your first section is about the initial moment of falling in love, only to move into a decline of sorts, and then being too dejected and depressed to care. Thus, rejection is not out of spite, or falling out of love, but because the speaker is literally too tired for another conversation, after exposing their true feelings to their lover. Their love, so to speak, has become drowning in gravity. Thus, it exerts the image of a struggle breath.

The pains of long distance also etches its way into this poem- there are reassurances, a few promises here and there, that things will turn out alright. However, the speaker has become the realist in the relationship, opting to assess what is there as opposed to what could be. They want things now and lack patience, though whether this is a positive or negative character trait is a matter of individual interpretation.

Now, my personal opinion shall enter the fray. I like this poem, because it is a poem from a position of realism- not eternal optimism, nor extreme pessimism. It has the right level of sentimentality and bitterness. Again, at times it feels so cold and depressing, but that is not necessarily a problem, though at times it can be overbearing. I actually found your ending to be a little rushed, in the sense that so much more could have been said. Perhaps it was deliberate, as in the speaker's given up, but I thought this was out of character.

Overall, I like this poem. I don't love it, but love is a very strong and often overused emotion, so- for the realist of the speaker- I will commit to realistic emotions. I liked this a lot and I hope you write more poems in this vein.

This made me cry.

This poem is too deep that I don't understand some of it. xD

oh my gosh, I love this so much! the words were just beautiful. it flowed so well. I could read it all the time!

I love it!