Young Writers Society

Hey, Storm. I'm here for the review that I promised you. Before I start, I want to preface this review that poetry is not my area of expertise and I might get somethings wrong.

I'm honestly mostly apathetic towards this poem. I've read stuff about this before and I'll probably read something like it again. It feels like a deeply personal poem and I do understand the sentiment behind it, but it still doesn't really manage to connect.

we children who wear cloaks of invisibility in our own homes.

i know the boy with the lemon bars;
the boy who learned that lemon bars don't taste quite as good

because there's still an irrational fear of unacceptance

Thanks for sharing this profound lamentation concerning a childhood forced into a painful need for secrecy. It effectively expresses frustration and anger against what it feels are genuine injustices inflicted by family members. I have suffered similarly and the pain is indeed deep. However, I can't say that their ignorance is based on Christianity or even their denomination as much as it is their misunderstanding of what Christianity is really about and perhaps on an exceedingly strong predisposition towards cruelty.

I like the simile of a child who learn about the bitterness of taste. The disappointment of parents whose dreams will never be realized. Both provided the poem with persuasive power. However, the proposal of invisibility a premise to justify non belief and the part about ignorance only served to weaken the poem's argument by the use of fallacious reasoning via false premise and name calling. So if it were my poem would leave them out.

Stormcloud,

I think this is a beautiful piece of writing. You did a phenomenal job of expressing your emotions - not just by telling the readers about them, but by making them feel them, too. That's a very difficult thing to do, so I applaud you for your ability!

I also think it's a very brave poem. I have no specific experience with the type of feelings and situation you are describing, but I do know what it's like to feel unwanted, misunderstood, and altogether like you don't belong, even in the places were you know you are supposed to. Again, I admire the content of this very much.

The only real suggestions/edits I have are grammatical in nature, so we'll move on to those.

For starters, you use a lot of fragments. That's totally okay if that's your lyrical style, but I think they should be used a little more sparingly - for me anyway, when the majority of a work is fragmented, it makes it difficult to see the piece as a whole and I find it easy to become distracted and hung up on the little pieces.

The second sentence in your first stanza should be edited to include the whom to which "we the children" are choosing to reveal themselves. Without this, the sentence lacks structure and direction. For example, it could be changed to read,

"we the children who pick and choose TO WHOM we reveal the deepest, darkest parts of our own hearts..."

Finally, I love the stanza about the boy with lemon bars. That part seemed very real, and it gave the whole poem a very down-to-earth feeling.

Again, great job!!

Wow! I can't even begin to describe how much this poem means to me. I am a closeted bisexual who recently came out to my mom, the only family member of mine that knows. I thought my mom would be accepting because she is liberal but apparently she only believes in gay and straight so she simply thinks I'm gay. She told me that all of my other family members would reject me if I ever dated a girl. Your poem expresses what the pain of rejection is like and you beautifully intertwined your own stories within your poem. Although I am religious I think it is hypocritical for family members like mine to reject their own family and justify it with religion, when Christians supposedly preach love and acceptance. The first three sentences are the most powerful to me it hurts. Everyone should be able to share what beats inside our hearts for everyone to see. I love your poem so much I have no suggestions. Keep on writing <3.