Longing for Pain

I can recount numerous times where I have felt so confused and lost with my own emotions, and therefore find myself relating greatly to the character within this poem. Memories become memories in themselves and emotions take over previous emotions as we continue to move on and grow from our previous experiences.

As someone who has had to deal with a number of toxic relationships in my time, whether they be romantic, friendships or family, I understand the viewpoint of this poem greatly and look forward to reading more of your works! Keep it up and well done!

- Jane xo

I can recount numerous times where I have felt so confused and lost with my own emotions, and therefore find myself relating greatly to the character within this poem. Memories become memories in themselves and emotions take over previous emotions as we continue to move on and grow from our previous experiences.

As someone who has had to deal with a number of toxic relationships in my time, whether they be romantic, friendships or family, I understand the viewpoint of this poem greatly and look forward to reading more of your works! Keep it up and well done!

- Jane xo

Hello koinoyokan!

The title of this poem got my interest so here I am reviewing this poem. Emotions are at times, incomprehensible. They're weird brews of irony and contradiction; a battlefield of sorts where opposite feelings are pitted against one each other. It's in this war and the never-ending stalemate that results from it that people find themselves in situations of dumb irony. For example, and in the case of your poem: toxic relationships. Being and participating in one renders a person numb to logic. Whereas most people think love and hate as opposites, a person trapped in toxic relationships sees these two as one so that love equals hate and hate equals love.

I knew I'd like the topic of your poem even before I started reading. Toxic relationships are rather a specialty of mine seeing that I am stuck in many forms of them, hahahaha. Reading your poem reminds me of the many fuck-ups I got myself into; reminded me of situations where I know I should have done better, but I didn't. It pained me to stay in those relationships but I did anyway. I don't know if I wanted the pain that came with it, that the toxicity is what actually excited me- what a fucked up way of thinking.

Your poem captures the confusion and helplessness of being in a toxic relationship. And you've done it very efficiently. It was done in a way that is simple, direct, unshakably honest to a point you appear unconcerned to your reader's judgment. You've written this with unrestrained pain, and for that I commend you. People have this way of bottling up emotions in the fear of how people might perceive them. This is what differentiates normal people from poets. To create a poem requires a certain degree of honesty and courage. It requires you to slice open your heart and trickle the blood at your readers. Poetry requires pain and the courage to show it. And the process of doing so is beautiful. By sharing this you touch the hearts of people like me and through sharing our own experiences, we take more in the end than what we gave out.

I hope by the end of the process of sharing stories that we find ourselves in some light. As much as I praise you for your honesty, I also need to warn you about your responsibility. Much like people are what they eat, the same thought applies to media. Social media proliferates with content that superficially appears to reflect the difficulty of life but in actuality is just another mechanism for monetization. It lures people with sad-sounding ten second poems specifically made to accommodate the ever decreasing attention span of people. This is dangerous. This enables unhealthy emotions. It feeds people with negativity and keeps on feeding it to them until people believe it's fine to keep unhealthy emotions, to nurture them even.

The key here is moderation of course. You want to make sure that you are not another vehicle in the commodization of emotions. You're going to have readers and you are going to be responsible for them. Poetry allows us to explore our feelings, allows a conversation with other people that no spoken words will allow. In this conversation, I do hope you find the light.

Hey! I'm here for a review.

The poem, to me, feels very simple and minimalistic, which is a style of poetry that I really like. The topic that you want to write about seems to be sadness and longing, and I think that you really approached it well without going overboard with it, if you get what I mean. The simpleness of the words seems to actually emphasize the longing and emptiness that the narrator of the poem feels.

Overall, I loved it! I'll be looking at more of your works for sure.

Have a good day,
Lynn

Hello koinoyokan! I'm here for a quick review!

I love how simplistic this poem is, it conveys the meaning very well in so few words.

Just a couple of small nitpicks.

"Then where we went" -> "Than where we went"

I would also add a period after "Spent together" to finish that thought.

I recommend cutting out "But" at the beginning of the fourth line, I think it's unnecessary.

Honestly, I don't have much else to say, it's so short! I think it'd be interesting if you made a prequel, maybe of the toxic relationship?

Well done, and keep writing!

Whatcha