I have become best friends with the bathroom wallpaper. They are pastel blue and yellow stripes, up and down, covered with textured dots. My eyes explore the seams holding the panels together until moisture distorts my vision and the stripes disappear into one mess.
I don’t like the echo in here. Every sigh and intake of breath reverberates off the contours of porcelain. Theses walls look down to me huddled on the floor against the sink. They listen to my aches and they reflect the sounds of it back to me.
The wallpaper holds me all in one place while I take this time to fall apart.
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,819 Reviews
Hello there, Clarity here to review.
This is a lovely poem, although it is not formatted in the way you would normally find. I would consider this poetry, but it would look more like it if you structured it into stanzas, not general paragraphs. I know that everyone has their own style, but this does look more like a few sentences that should be placed within a short story; hence why it would look better in standard poetry format. It is up to you how you do that, though. I'll give you an example of what I mean:
I'm not saying you have to do this, but I reckon it might be more effective. The structure of a poem has a huge effect on the reader, and having it in general sentences may not be the best way to do that.
On another note. The whole thing is wonderfully written and I enjoyed reading it. You wrote this in such an artistic way... I could just imagine the scene of a girl basically breaking down.
There's nothing else I can really say. It was really good.
Well done and Happy YWSing,
-Clarity.
Hello!
Don't tell us that you don't like it. Show us. Don't say "I don't like." Say the echo is doing something you don't like, personify the echo, describe it in a way that conveys discomfort. For example, if I wanted to write that my bedroom walls make me uncomfortable, I might write something like this: "the olive panels bend inward at the top / exposing rotting planks beneath / crawling with termites." We don't have termites, but it makes a great image. You don't want stuff crawling around in your walls. It's gross. So it makes the reader have an uncomfortable image instead of the author telling the reader that the feeling is bad. Make the reader have the feeling.This is lovely. I don't know if we should quite classify it as poetry: it is more of a description than anything else.
Let me help you turn it into poetry.
The first sentence is fantastic. It pulls the reader in.
The second sentence starts with an issue. "They" is a plural pronoun. Somehow the wallpaper has divided and reproduced between the first and the second sentence.
The second sentence also is rather long to be poetic. It tells us exactly what we need to know, but it doesn't show us. It doesn't give us feeling. I would write it more like this: "the vertical blues and yellows meet in seams / my vision is textured with moisture / the wall is a jumble." There I use more vivid verbs so I don't have to clutter my sentence with too many adjectives. Use heavier words so you don't have to use so many.
"Theses" watch out for typos! try using stronger verbs than "look." it could change the whole feel of the sentence (also, change "to" to "on"). "these walls gaze down on me" makes the wall seem like it has softer feelings towards you. If you said "glare," the walls don't like you. Etc., etc.
[quote] reflect the sounds of it[quote] make sure your nouns aren't arguing about how many things there are. You said "aches," as in plural, but "it" is a singular pronoun.
The last line is a bit wordy and long to end on. Try to shorten it up. You can take out unneeded words quite easily. I'm going to take out all the unneeded words in the last line as an example: "The wallpaper holds me while I fall apart." See how short and lovely that is? You don't need all that other stuff in there. It clutters it up.
Another note: throughout the whole piece, you use quite a few pronouns (they, it, etc.). Don't use as many because they tend to cause confusion where no confusion was needed.
If you ever need anything, feel free to PM me. I hope that this proves helpful to you. Happy writing!
All helpful hints. But I think my problem with poetry is I just do what I feel like. I'm not so concerned with conventions or what sounds good. Which is no disregard to your completely on-point comments. I just find poetry to be whatever comes out.
This is really beautiful! Okay, I admit I'm meant to be revising a German paragraph but when I read this, I was blown away. Seriously. While I was reading, I was curious as to how you were going to round it off, but you finished perfectly. It was the last sentence which really got me, and I'm now a fan of your writing :3
Uhhh.. Excuse me while I reread this and be super picky to find a mistake..
I'm back, and as this is labled "poetry" I think it would appeal more to the reader if it was set out line-for-line. If you were going to do that, then perhaps break up the last sentence a bit with the last one just being "fall apart" this would make it like WOWOW.
That's all I could possibly suggest, I love this! I get the feeling I'll be coming back to this a lot just to read it. Beautiful.
-CFG
*brb crying*
You're the best, thank you.
Aw it's amazing though!