*****

Raven, hello!! I love this poem so much! Right from the start, I found it to be really relatable. To me, it seems like you were talking about someone who you have some fond memories of, despite a lot of bad things that they did to you too. Overall, it really seems to touch on the feeling of nostalgia for past memories and how we can want things that we used to have, despite how much pain they brought us as well.

If absence makes the heart grow fonder,

Then what does presence do?

You start off this poem with a really powerful question! It's true, we often think about how hard things and endurance can make us so much stronger, but what if we didn't have to go through those things at all and instead, we were just faced with the love that we have always craved? In this part of the poem, it seems like you're asking how things would've been if this person had stayed in your life for being more present.

The boardgames we wore down to faded cardboard,

We dig them up, but can’t remember any of the rules.

The candy we begged for in the checkout aisle,

We buy one now, and can only taste the chemicals.

It’s not that any of them have changed,

It’s only our perception, our cloud of nostalgia.

Especially loved these lines! These are also relatable topics. You talk about things that used to be so important and central to our lives, that we knew so well, but now we have moved on, and forgotten all about them. It's like those quotes that say something like "you never know the last time you're gonna play with your favorite toy" or something like that. All of these childhood activities didn't leave our lives because they are bad, but we simply grew up, not even noticing when they went away. But now we think back about how special they were to us, and we have that desire for them to return.

When you left, it caused some sorrow,

But I hate to say it also caused some healing.

I feel like the "But" is unnecessary in the second line. I would put a period after the word sorrow, and have the second line be a separate sentence. This is one of my favorite parts of the whole poem, though. I love how simply you state that healing can come from sorrow, which is so true in my life as well.

And that was only what the others knew about.

In my opinion, you don't expand on this line enough for it to make sense to me. I can sense that perhaps things were going on that other people weren't aware of, but this line sort of stands out and personally I might remove it. Or expand on it more!

So too did the truth, in a haze of nostalgia.

I would remove the 'too' to help it flow better because I feel like that is just a filler word. I love the use of vocab here with nostalgia and haze being together!

The ending lines of the poem flow very well! Overall, the entire thing was highly relatable, and really powerful! I love this poem so much and I think it has such a powerful message and I'm really glad that I was able to read it. Phenomenal work I can't wait to read more of your poetry (hopefully soon???) <33

Your friend,
Ellie