nobody prepares you for how bittersweet saying "goodbye" is

time

noun

1.the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.

2. something there's never enough of

(synonyms: melancholia, regret, sadness, inevitable)

for reference: you only have so much time, so you have none at all.

Hi century,

I am so very sorry for your loss - pets take up a special place in our hearts and lives if we let them, and it sounds like you had a very lovely cat, that was well-loved and will be well-missed. May they rest in peace.

As this very much seems like a processing poem - I won't have much critical feedback, but hopefully some of this is helpful for your poetry writing! <3

Overall - I think one place where there would be room for improvement would be on carrying images throughout the poem. I think this is an effective technique for adding continuity and depth to a poem. Basically right now your poem has maybe 20 different images in it: books/chapters, closing, siblings, clinging, winter-air / tears-freeze, wounds, midnight-hued, time, captive, beating, running, talking, cats, emptiness. But outside of winter + tears freezing, none of these images really link up together. If you could limit your poem to a few images that connect or exist in the same family of images, then suddenly they're in conversation with each other - like (sailboats, water, shore, sand, sun, wind, flip-flops, sirens) or (winter, snow, freezing, moon-glow, white-earth, breath-frozen, mittens, fire-place, warm tea) or (sewing, needles, thread, weaving, frayed, snapped, braided, roots, hair, vines) ... there's lots of different families that images can belong to! Just a thought!

I also think the poem could maybe benefit from a bit more specificity about the cat that was lost rather than just ruminating on grief itself - I think that would make the poem feel a bit more concrete / rooted in reality. But that's more of a preference - and not any sort of technical problem with the piece.

My favorite line was definitely "(they say that time heals all wounds, but time has already beat me till i am midnight hued.)" - that's a very "wow!" line - loved the combo of time and hue - and just thought it was great phrasing. I like how it seems like the speaker is arguing against the reader or against sayings throughout the poem - it gives a sense of frustration to the tone.

You did a great job in the poem communicating emotions in a deeper more layered way than simply "grieving" or "sad" but described a bit deeper the process of going through and experiencing these emotions - which can be something very difficult to capture in writing even if one knows what the emotions feels like.

Overall the theme expressed seems to be that loss takes on an especially hard factor when time is an element because time captures our hearts in a way nothing else can, so when we've loved something for a very long time, the loss can be especially bitter.

Hope the process of writing this poem brought you some peace - I know poetry writing can be really therapeutic in my experience for processing things. Wishing you all the very best!

alliyah

Hey chrysanthemumcentury,

I just wanted to stop by and leave a review.

To be honest with you, I felt the pain radiating through this poem. This is something I can relate to on first-hand level. I'm sorry you have to go through this and you're right, nothing compares to losing your feline friend. This isn't really a review tbh. It's really just me saying accept my sympathy and that you're not alone.

I want you to know (even though this is hard to hear) that there's light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps you can get a painting of your feline friend to hang up on a wall? If that's your cat as your profile picture, it's beautiful.


Have a good rest of your day.

God Bless you

~ Cheerio