when i swim it still feels like drowning
when i fly it feels like falling im afraid
to look down and see my broken body
in the rubble, because when i heal it
seems like i wasnt broken enough the
first time
i now have to look at my twisted body
and my twisted face push my thumbs
into my eye holes and arrange my
brain the right way
im afraid to self medicate
because i dont know who id become
i am a self surgeon with no anesthesia
much too awake my skin prickles
at the touch of my own hands
am i fixing myself
or am i twisting myself
into something
much more
broken
i cant tell all i see is
the blood on my hands
and all i feel is
the knife in my
stomache
a hushed whisper
in the back of my mind
rasps "are we better yet"
but everything is still broken
and i am still falling
from the balcony
and i am still dead
on the pavement
and i am still drowned in the river
and i am still hung in the basement
and i am still locked in the closet
gasping for air as i tuck paper into
the cracks for concealment and
i am still smiling
with blood in my mouth
i can taste it
i am a role model
and a missing person
there is a dead body
at the kitchen table
i am a role model
thats the worst of it
someone wants to be
this unstable
i dont want
the people who look up to me
to see me hanging in the cellar
i am a role model and that means
i have to get better
Hey Gemmy <33 I was scavenging the poetry section and found this beautiful poem of yours, so I thought I would leave a review since I loved reading it so much!
I love how you don't use commas here, at all. At first, I was thinking that it was sort of hard to differentiate the sentences, but then I fell in love with it once the message really sank in. I feel like this writing style reflects the words you are saying. It is the non-stop feeling, almost this suspense that we feel, this inability to be truly satisfied or find rest.
I love how you use graphic statements to say things that cant be said any other way. I feel like you finally purt words to one way that I feel, so thank you. To me, this shows a willingness to endure personal pain for the longterm benefit. Lots of people say things like "beauty is pain" and I feel like this is that, but in a more emotional way.
The entire rest of the poem was incredible, but this part stood out to me the most:
This makes me think of my younger self, yearning for a happy ending to my story. I love how you connect these hopes and dreams to so much present pain. The entire mood of this poem is exactly how I needed to feel right now, so thank you for making my day better. Love youuuu <33
Your friend,
Ellie
Thank you so much. I love you too <333
Hello there! How has your day been going? I’ve dropped by to give a small review, everything is subjective, don’t take me too seriously.
From the beginning, this piece struck me with its incredible flow. It is very readable, incredibly punchy – something that I would mostly ascribe to verse and stanza structure but was also probably influenced by your lovely use of anafora (“and i am”, ”i” and ”and”, especially, words that perpetuate intimacy, a sense of being overwhelmed, and the idea of a fault within oneself, all of which are feelings that this poem absolutely wins out on). This flow, along with the aforementioned word choices pull the reader into the speaker’s world, creating a pseudo-collective experience that makes the whole thing memorable, emotionally impactful, and thematically strong as a consequence. Speaking of themes, the way you flowed from one theme to another in places like the third stanza from the end (a combination of the morbid imagery before it and the role model theme from after) worked incredibly well in communicating thought flow, chaos, and the difficulty of transcribing emotional experiences into words.
Another thing that I loved, before we get into any criticisms, is your work with imagery. Images that gained a certain connotation at the beginning (hanging in the basement, for example), went through transformation throughout. These transformations, connected as they were to relatively concrete but still-changing concepts, added great depth of meaning to the piece as a whole, allowed for a more fluid experience, and resonated with the common experience of singular things having multiple associations and connotations even within the mind of one individual person.
As far as criticisms go, at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I would point out some structural features of the poem that, in my own completely subjective and personal opinion, could potentially stand to be improved. There were times, when I wondered whether it was necessary for a verse break at that particular point, others where I considered if a restructuring of an entire stanza wasn’t in order. Not because of flow or readability, but because of meaning association. This feeling was particularly strong in the first two stanzas, when the verse breaks hadn’t started being mostly for emphasis of meaning or effectual flow. While I agree that the half-by-half kind of style added to the feeling that the speaker was rambling off an introduction to their emotional conundrum (fair enough) and made the whole thing feel hurried and breathless (understandable), there was so much variability of meaning structure in the first stanza that it started to fall apart a little, with the first verse being relatively whole thematically, the second jumping into a different topic towards the end, the third finishing its thought on the fourth line and the fourth on the sixth.
Overall, the impactful imagery that you managed to convey from the very beginning made the chaos relatively harmless, and, as I said before, I loved it regardless. I just hope to be of some potential, constructive help as a fellow sufferer.
Have a very nice rest of the day wherever you are, I wish you nothing but the best in whatever you may attempt next : )
Goodbye for now!
The Blob
<333 thank you very much for the review
Hello!
Ley here to review this piece for you!
Lets get right into the review!
First impressions...
I immediately knew from reading teh first stanza that this was going to be an extremely powerful piece of poetry. I'd be lying if I said my eyes weren't slightly teary by the end of it. As a big sister, this resonated with me in so many ways, and I truly do appreciate you for sharing this with us!When I was reading this I felt...
Sad, emotional, empathetic, drowned. This piece made me feel every single emotion. Your use of language did it for me-- and the formatting of this poetry was the best formatting preference you could've chose. I felt like the narrator was really speaking to me, having a conversation with me, confided in me. I also wanted to mention that this reminded me a lot of spoken word.My favorite line/quote is...
This whole stanza:I feel the emotional aspect of this piece really came alive right here. This was a turning point in pace when I was reading-- for some reason I started to read your words faster as if the narrator were upset and/or frustrated with themselves. The repetitive reuse of the words 'i am still' was truly a great idea.
Some things that could be improved are...
Just one-- a grammar mistake possibly:The correct spelling for this word is 'surgeon'.
Overall...
This was an emotional and truly powerful take on how to keep yourself going when others look up to you. Those younger than us usually don't understand that we're not perfect. To them, we are. I really enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing, once again! Happy Writing <3With Love, Ley
Thank you for the review ley!