She takes a daily swim down into the vast sea of emotions, returning up onto the land of despair, and back to her house of disappointment. she wraps up in her comforter of self humiliation and eventually gets up and walks into the kitchen to feed her withering body. Not withering from malnutrition or hunger but of brittle bones that can no longer hold up the tasks of everyday life.
Bones that can not handle the heavy expectations her owner has developed over the past years of success. Success that has sadly run out. She looks out into the street and feel a twinge of pain run up her spine. But is that real pain or is it another figment of her imagination just as the idea that things might work out.
Her thoughts race as she plans out her agenda for the day, her chest tightening with every task piled onto her list of grievances. Cold sweat breaks out on her forehead causing her to realize the state of panic she is really in. The “you’re in over your head” and the “tomorrow will only worse” ware her down even further. The crack of a knee cap under the pressure of life echoes through the empty room. Making her understand the solidarity of her life.
It is just her. It had always been just her.
And that realization itself is what broke her down to the point of no return.
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140,706 Literary Works • 673,672 Reviews
Hi there,
while not all poems necessarally have stanza and line breaks, I'm generally a fan of them. I think that this poem might work a bit better with some line breaks however that's just my opinion. Line breaks just aid the reader in understanding the separate thoughts better and getting a picture of the scene piece by piece rather than all at once.
I think you did a good job with some imagery in the piece from the "crack of a knee cap" and the "brittle bones" although there could maybe be potential for a bit more figurative language througout. The ending was quite sad, but it was an interesting read overall!
Nice work!
~alliyah
Hey, nice work on this. And welcome to YWS!
I'l be brutally honest, I don't love this prose poem ( i think that's what you've tried to make it, but it seems more like a short story to me ), I think that with time you can perfect your language use.
No doubt you've used some great verbs, adverbs and adjectives, you've used some metaphors and similes but overall I just feel that the 'poem' itself is a bit too 'following the rules', kinda thing. I don't know how to explain it, but it reminds me of the writing structures we have been told to follow in school. Now this is not necessairly a bad thing but to just let your writing flow a bit more would definitely allow it to increase its potential as a piece of writing.
I can see little snippets of your talent, in lines like "she wraps up in her comforter of self humiliation", "she takes a daily swim down into the vast sea of emotions"... If you want, I think you can make something great out of this, by separating it into stanzas, not paragraphs, and taking your metaphors, like the ones listed above and extending them. Trying not to point out the obvious things that us readers can already assume.
If you would like any more tips or anything then feel free to PM me, and know that this is constructed criticism, and definitely not nit-picking.
Lots of potential here! Keep writing lots and lots - Tiana
Hey there, @ks2017! I'll be stopping by to review this real quick.
Let me point out a few small nitpicks here and there. This should be pretty quick/simple; hopefully they are all understandable to why they need to be fixed. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me!
Capitalize the first letter of this sentence here.
Firstly, feel should be feels in the first sentence. And, the second sentence needs a question mark at the end, not a period. I also think "into" should be "onto". It sounds correct that way, for she is looking onto the street, not into it. I'm not sure, this may just be me!
I believe "ware" should be "wear". Also, I think you should somehow rephrase this sentence. These quotes - are they simply ideas or parts of speech the main character has heard before? Add in some of that information to clear it up!
Instead of a period that separates these two sentences, change it to a comma and join the two together. The period was possibly misused here?
Anyway, very powerful ending! You definitely couldn't have ended it better; what a way to stop it! I feel like this topic is somewhat relatable to many people (not, however, as serious) because it is something that lots have experienced the hard way. I think you could lengthen this up a bit more, bring in some more juices and spices!
Something I noticed as well was that you put this under the poetry category. It does bring an important message in the long run, but this piece overall belongs in the short story section, or another category. It would certainly be more suited to the short story section if you lengthen this like mentioned before.
You have tons of imagery here, and I think the main issue was some punctuation here and there. It wasn't too serious, though. This is a topic you can play with a bit, though, and I encourage you to add on to this and extend the creativeness of it. It was pretty short as a whole. I won't judge this by its length, but it would be improved if you can add more description of what is going on. Not imagery, per se, but a little bit of backstory to this main character. For example, you can talk more about what she is doing in the beginning, possible facial expressions (since that would surely impact your story!). I like the idea of no names, just female pronouns, and you should keep that aspect.
Overall, cute little piece. It does, I think, need a little work. But go back and check through it! Maybe that'll spark something to add/change. Well, I hope this helped you!
~BlueSunset