Young Writers Society

Hi, catlover!

Q here to review your piece today.

First of all, since I see from the description that this is based on something that happened to you, I'm really sorry that things turned out like that. I can feel a lot of powerful emotions through your writing, and I think you expressed things in a beautiful way about this situation.

I'm sort of reading this poem in two parts: the first goes from the first line up until "my first love." Then, the relationship in both lifetimes takes a bit of a darker turn.

I really enjoy the first half. I think repetition is working in your favor: "I bought her flowers or maybe she bought me flowers. I opened the car door for her or maybe she opened the car door for me." -- the way those phrases mirror each other just sort of rings pleasantly in my head, and I think it provides a nice structure for your poem (or piece! It sort of reads like a poem to me, though, so apologies if I call it that and it's not what you intended!).

I also love this line: "In another life, we had a beautiful, horrible, loving, lonesome relationship." Again, that repetition, along with the opposite ideas here, made this line roll along very nicely.

I think things get a little thornier in the second half, both for the poor narrator and a little wording-wise. The reason I say that is because I got a little confused by the tense. At first, it was all past tense, but then it sort of toggles between the two:

I loved her as much as I do in this lifetime. We talked all the time exactly like we did in this lifetime. I cried over her as much as I do in this lifetime. She was still my first love.

In another lifetime she still leaves me. She still lies to me. She still lies about me. She still loves someone else more than me. She still doesn’t fight for me.

In this lifetime, there is both present (love) and past tense (talked), and in the parallel lifetime, there is also past (loved, cried, etc.) and present (leaves, lies).

You're still using parallels, that lifetime and this one, but it's a little harder for me to follow for some reason. I don't have a very definite suggestion on how to increase the smoothness/understanding, but I think it's mostly that first stanza I quoted, where the tense toggles back and forth, that tripped me up. Maybe because "lifetime" is repeated so many times, that I'm unsure which "this" and "that" is.

In another life she is still a horrible person.

Hm, it would be cool to see this line in keeping with the dichotomy from earlier, like, "she is still a beautiful, terrible person," or something. Since it seemed like love is sort of mingled with hate (?) earlier, it would be interesting to see the two still alongside each other here, too.

But the betrayal hurts a little less in that lifetime because we weren’t two women.

And then we get to the crux of your piece! Maybe the betrayal hurts a little less for the narrator, but this is definitely an "oof" of a line for the readers, and I think you did that well.

Also, it's interesting to me that the narrator doesn't try to imagine a situation in which the lover doesn't leave, which I feel like would be natural to do. Instead, it's just about changing up the gender so that leaving doesn't hurt so much, so that the reason for leaving isn't as bad. I think that gives the poem a lot of strength and helps the readers feel the pain and some injustice.

I do have a slight question about this --

In this lifetime she didn’t leave me because I cheated, or I didn’t give her enough attention, or because she found someone better. She only got away because of the simple fact that we were two women.

Since we don't have very many details about this relationship, every one counts. And I was thinking of the line earlier, "She still loves someone else more than me." I guess it seems sort of like she partially did leave "because she found someone better," because "she still loves someone else more." Maybe there's more nuance than that, but I guess I was a little confused since it seemed like there was more of a reason than just gender, and there's so much packed into so little space.

It would’ve never been enough unless I was a man and she was a man or she was a man and I was a woman.

Did you mean the first part to say "unless I was a woman and she was a man?" I was momentarily tripped up by the sudden switch to man and man after the repetition of woman and man.

In the other lifetime, we still don’t end up together, but our ending is better.

I like the way you ended this with an ending. I think it summed up the nature of the poem pretty well and brought readers back down to a sort of bitter end after a painful peak a little earlier on.

I think the piece's strengths are really the emotional punch it packs into such a short form, and the repetition that helps build up to that punch and structure the emotion! The repetition sort of unravels in the second half, but it's like the structure keeping the emotions together unravels, too, and I like that. Also looking back, I really love the title, too.

I think this was a really interesting way to present and think through a difficult situation, and I hope that writing it was helpful. <3 Great work! Let me know if you have any questions.

-Q