Published December 13, 2008
I once thought life resembled sand
Shifting along the dunes of time
Beside the sea of eternity,
Until the grains dissolved from under my soles
And I dropped,
Matter, mind, and spirit all
Falling falling falling
To where, I don’t know.
Nothing, perhaps,
For there was no ground to stand on
Except for the sand between my toes,
Irritating my skin with what I had lost.
It was then when I looked into the mirror
And saw that I was dead
For the first time.
Gone.
I could not, or cannot
Find the darling girl who played
In the sand
On the surface
With her ignorance.
An elder woman took her place,
Asking for everything she’d been promised,
Pleading for her inheritance: the world
They had betrothed to her.
Liars.
The world was never mine to grasp,
Never mine to claim,
And they tricked me into trusting
The sand would always be there
While I played.
That is when I crawled,
Or was dragged, to the rock,
And the rock has held me ever since.
The rock is life, though life does not resemble it.
But every once in a while,
For reasons I don’t like to understand,
I step off the rock
To hold the sand
And try to keep it from slipping
Through my fingers.
I know this is in a free style format. What I'm looking for specifically is "does this successfully convey the themes I want it to." So, in essence, is this effective? Is it pretty? Thank you in advance for your comments 
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140,588 Literary Works • 673,542 Reviews
Hello, and good morrow! I shall be your reviewer today. XD
This, in my opinion, should be cut. I was really enjoying the piece, it was flowing nicely with good word choice and such, until it hit this particular patch which I dislike for a number of reasons. The first being the use of the word 'then' (and congratulations, with this piece you have pushed me over the edge into writing an article on the correct use of that word. About a thousand other YWSers have used it in the past week, so don't worry). It's a horribly bad word to use that does nothing but reveal you're inability to seamlessly blend actions together.
Secondly, we went from a beach to a random mirror; do not move away from the core concept of the piece with random, distracting imagery. She could have, after all, caught her reflection on the water.
Thirdly, it tells. You do a great job of encapsulating the ideas/themes of the piece with imagery and you should continue to do that. Blatantly stating it as you did is wrong. So, to reiterate I think you should scratch those lines and leave a space there (don't fill it) effectively breaking this into three, much clearer stanzas.
It should look like this:
**
Otherwise, I thought you did a great job. I think it did work and it was a good piece exploring the notion of constancy, mortality, life and a few other, associated notions. I enjoyed it and I hope this helped.
Cheers