dear past and future

I accidentally mixed three different poems into this poem. I am so sorry! I bolded one of the poems and italicized the other poem to make them easier to differentiate.

Hello, My Friend!

Pleasure to meet you! My name is Raven, and after discovering this poem among the older works of the Green Room, I'd love to bring it the attention it deserves with a quick review. I hope you don't mind!

To start, thank you for clarifying that these were three different poems, as that really helps explain some things! And all three were so good, and even seemed to tie into eachother a little bit (so it's kinda cool that they came out this way). I love how the first poem feels like a well-intentioned yet bitter letter to your future self, contrasted by a resentful letter to your past self. It really does feel like how so many people see themselves; curious and nervous about the future, but spiteful toward the past, for a multitude of potential reasons. The second poem feels like a very bittersweet vent about childhood regrets, how it was fueled by not just ignorance, but sadness and perhaps instability—something you can rarely if ever blame a child for facing. As for the third, it feels like a very sorrowful plea to a father who refuses to take the blame, for a fracture that came between him and his child. All three feel so powerful, so raw, so real, it evokes this powerful sense of empathy.

*ahem* As far as a technical review goes, I don't have much to critique. The metric, the substance, the wording—it's all there, and it's all lovely. I only think this could use a little touchup on two things. Firstly, format—this would be amazing as a poetry collection. As I mentioned, the poems are great on their own, but also tie into each other very well. I think, instead of bold-typing or italicizing the separate poems, if you put some space between each poem and gave them individual titles, this would look awesome!

The second thing would be a little grammar touchup. For example, capitalizing the "I" when referring to yourself, maybe separating repetition with commas ["terrible, terrible" or "why, why, why"], or adding question marks where asking a question. Plus these couple of tiny, tiny things here:

[They're] missing the point

Why did [they] hurt us

Was it ever worth all i've done

I did it for you

If that goes to waste

I've done it all for no one

Dear yesterday

I hate you

I hate how close we both are

They say that we’ve grown

In which we have

But they’re missing the whole face of the depression

And it’s that i never was bad at all

But the accusations

And harmful durations

Dear yesterday

You’re a child

And it hurts how you say i was bad

I never meant to be bad

I never meant to hurt

I never meant to scare

I’m sorry i can’t speak correctly

I’m sorry that i was young

But now if i cry I feel that

I’m manipulating everyone

I understand it was bratty but i was a child

Dad say sorry

Please

Hey wonderful person! I’m here to give you a review on this amazing poem.
There are so many feelings here, and I am sorry if a review is not what you need at the moment. I just want to give some feedback for you, because I feel that this work could be even more amazing if it was cleared up and made concise, because it is already so powerful! For a first poem, this is amazing and you are incredibly talented with conveying feelings.
First of all, I like the way you separated the poem into a letter to your past, and one to your future. The first stanza is strong. I feel like it could be separated further into the sections of “dear future self” so that it could be a bit more readable--as it is right now, it could be a bit clearer to read. I also think that in the third line, “ever” seems a little redundant and could probably be removed to make it more concise. In contrast, before “hotel by the sea”, you could add an “or” to connect the ideas of an apartment and a hotel more. You use a lot of ocean imagery in this first stanza, and I think it adds a cohesiveness to the section that I like! It makes me wish that there was a thread tying the other stanzas together as well, like perhaps the air or the earth. At the end of the stanza, you repeat “dear future self” again, and I feel that that isn’t necessary since it’s already been said so many times. A question mark at the end of “did you find her yet” would also add an extra punch to that line and the end of the stanza!
Now, in the second stanza I’m getting the feeling that using “dear yesterday” so many times breaks up the flow of the poem and since most of the stanza is talking about the same thing, the separation seems a bit interruptory. You also use the sentence “I hate you” a lot in this stanza, and this could possibly tire out the reader and even come off as a bit complain-y. Repeating “I hate” and then talking about the things you hate about yesterday provides a lovely repetition that gives the reader a bit of a punch.
The line “they’re missing the face of the depression” confuses me a little. Is there any way you could phrase that differently, to make it a bit clearer and convey your message better?
At some point in this section, you change from second person (talking about “you”) to talking about yourself and in the first person. I feel like a section or line break here would make that more clear and break up the long stanza you have going on.
In a way, the end of the poem could almost be its own poem--and a part of me wishes it was. The sentiment to the narrator’s father is powerful, and I wished it had been given its time to shine rather than being muddled in with the rest. If you are intent on keeping it together with this one, though, I’d say to create a new stanza addressing the narrator’s father.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this! You have a talent for showing your emotions through words. I cannot wait to see what else you create!
Keep writing!
<3, chem

I really enjoyed the emotion of this poem! It's something that I feel like I really relate to. Well done!

This is one of the best poems I hv read