hatelifeloveyou

Heya, foxtails!

Wow, what a fantastic poem. The first stanza is immediately compelling, and even though the poem is visually short, there's so much packed into it.

I'm going to go through stanza by stanza with comments, and then take a stab at interpreting the poem as a whole.

you leave your glasses
on the nightstand,
but never out of my focus

The first two lines are relatively simple, but you turn them on their heads with the last line, in which you loop that vision aspect back in with "focus." The meaning, to me, means that even when the person the narrator is speaking to is not in the room, they're still the focus, here represented by the glasses. But it's just cleverly done, I think, and reads so nicely.

Then you carry the theme into the next stanza, which helps (along with the lack of periods) to really flow through this poem.

youve slipped past my peripheral
& enlightened my world so subtly

Both "peripheral" and "enlightened" help carry the theme of vision, but they also add some more information about the relationship -- it's not only intimate, like leaving glasses on the nightstand, but subtle and enlightening. A sort of poetic relationship, mayhaps.

i miss your presence —
you, longing for white hills & trees,
overthinking everything that started
before it began
like dc in the summertime

This stanza, to me, feels the most different from the others. It takes a deeper dive into what "you" is like, and it's a lot less interior than the rest of the poem. I think this is definitely the place for a different-feeling stanza, right in the center of your poem and taking up a lot of space.

I find it really interesting that what the narrator first thinks of in missing this person is their own feelings of missing ("longing"), and overthinking things. So even though they miss this person's "presence," that's something expressed by intangible ideas in a really tangible way. The sort of feeling or essence of the person.

I really like the lines, "overthinking everything that started / before it began" -- my brain can't really untangle it, but I like the idea of thinking of things that started before they began. It just feels nice.

I feel like there's a lot more I'm not getting in this stanza, because it reads to me like a small peak into a lot of shared moments, and things which the readers wouldn't necessarily get. Like, I don't know where the "white hills & trees" might be or what significance that holds. But I do like the way it provides a look outside of the immediacy of the rest of the poem. And I like how they aren't in DC in the summertime, but somehow the overthinking everything... etc. is like DC in the summer. Fascinating!

my chapstick shares your cells
& your pockets are filled with
my wettest secrets

What a clever stanza! I love the way you focus on the chapstick sharing cells (rather than saying "you share my chapstick" or something), it's interesting how that transfers. I did think "wettest" was a little bit of a funky word for the tone of the poem, but I also love how you use "wettest secrets" to describe what I took to be tissues (wet with tears/snot) in a pocket. It really succinctly showed not only the nature of the relationship in sharing these moments but also in sharing this physical closeness.

And this closeness works well with the last stanza:

you hold me through the night
in the deepest layers
of my fall

I like how "night" and "my fall" are operating here, along with "deepest layers" -- to me, it's reading as they hold the narrator through their rough times, but I like thinking about the way you layer for fall weather, as well, and also the way emotions and relationships have a lot of layers to them. Really neat way of expressing that.

I've sort of been interpreting little bits as I've gone along XD but despite the surface-level simplicity of this poem, it's hard to untangle all of the emotions, especially in that middle stanza. And I think that part of that is what I mentioned earlier, like getting a brief glimpse into a private/intimate relationship.

I take it to be a poem of longing, from the missing expressed in that central stanza. Everything is written in the present tense, but it still ends up feeling like the "you" is still in the "peripheral" vision, just a bit. It would have been cool, maybe, to see that vision imagery come up again, since you carried it through two stanzas already, just to tie the poem together. But I really love the images you develop later.

One thing I wonder about is the title, "hatelifeloveyou." As a title, I really like it and the formatting. But I'm not sure about this poem -- it's so un-self-centered, so to speak. Everything the narrator reveals about themself is sort of embedded in the other person. So I get the "loveyou" part, but only the last two stanzas really give any clues as to the "hatelife," when we see the narrator perhaps crying and going through some stuff. I guess I love both the title and the poem, but I wasn't sure they necessarily suited each other!

I really love that this is a poem I'll be thinking about for a while. It's so clean and just whittled down to its core. Thanks for writing this, it made me really happy to read!

-Q

Hai :3

The whole mood of this poem is sooo intimate and tender ~~ I can literally feel it wrapping around me like a soft blanket!! All of the imagery combined is such a gentle perspective on love or longing. iIt’s small, simple, but packed with emotion. It’s like saying "you’re always here" without shouting it, and that subtlety works perfectly!! Nothing is outright in your face, but that quiet intimacy is felt.

There’s something really cool about this whole idea of someone creeping into your life quietly but completely shifting everything. Like, it’s just genius how you used "peripheral" to talk about how they’re always just outside of your vision but still changing everything. That very anatomical term adds this feeling of things being too much, too intense, just like that overthinking. It's almost like I feel it deep in my chest, and even though this is clearly your poem, it relates to me.

like dc in the summertime

!!! I just love the specific location drop here!! DC in the summertime feels sticky and hazy, right? That’s such a neat connection!! It adds to the feeling that this poem isn't just words, and that it's meant for someone ~~ It feels so very personal and close to your heart, like your emotions are dripping off of the words. All of the seasons and the locations make it feel like a whole lifetime in just a few stanzas.

Though, I wish you leaned into that more!! It feels random within the context of the rest of the poem to me. There’s no clear connection to Washington, DC anywhere and it stands out as a more specific reference compared to the abstract ideas everywhere else. Maybe there's a shared memory with that place that you could sprinkle in!! Or maybe you could find a more universally relatable image that might feel smoother in the poem's context. It just came out of nowhere in my opinion!!

^^^ This happens a lot!! I find it hard to connect all of your stanzas together; the imagery is amazing, but none of it fits together. I always view poetry as a puzzle, like pieces come together to make one big picture in the end. This poem feels like many small pictures instead of that!! Every stanza could be its own poem, and I am struggling to find some middle-ground in what's actually happening here.

you hold me through the night
in the deepest layers
of my fall

This is a perfect ending !!!!

There’s something sososo haunting about this last part. It’s like the narrator is falling, but they’re not alone, because this person is there with them. It's also got this melancholy vibe like maybe the fall is inevitable, and it’s beautiful in a bittersweet way. It feels like a mix of body, intimacy, and vulnerability, all wrapped up together. I love how cyclical their love is too!! They've spent many seasons together and yet their love is just as strong as it started. Everyone wants a love like that.

This is GORGEOUS and dreamy and so full of feeling!! It feels like a soft sigh of nostalgia and yearning, and I'm obsessed with how you sneak in all these beautiful metaphors without overcomplicating anything. Amazing!! ^_^

- Payton