Unshed tears living in my heart,
hidden for I must show no signs of weakness.
If I'm awake long enough at night,
they silently slide down my cheeks.
One for mom,
one for dad.
One for my sickness,
one for my friends.
Then it starts over again,
until I painfully fall asleep.
Waking up to face a new day,
with puffy swollen eyes.
I hope it doesn't show.
I refuse to let them see weakness,
even if it kills me.
I walk through this life,
behind a mask of makeup.
Half wishing someone would notice,
half scared that someone will.
What's a girl to do?
In a list
A contest entry
- Depictions of Eternity by Perception.
1050 points, ended September 14, 2007, 12 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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good
this is a good poem but its not very dark it is sad though, i quite liked half wishing someone would notice,half scared someone will, very nice, good luck -
wow, thoughtful and deep. you must have put some serious tthought into this one.
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Okay, Chrissy, there's a thing you've probably heard in writing: show, don't tell. The easiest way to do that is to use emotion to help us understand the person speaking. This piece, like all of your poems I've read, is full of emotion, but it's not always expressed as well as it could be.
In the first stanza, you've got a great first line going, with one change. Let's put some action in here. Change 'living' to 'live' and keep the focus, for now, on the tears as you move to the second line. Rather than saying you must show no signs of weakness, say something like 'for they may be thought as weakness,' thus keeping the stanza about the tears. Now, the last two lines are all telling. We don't want the uncertainty of the 'if', and we need more pathos than 'they silent slide down my cheeks.' We need to know that you're lying awake in the dark and the tears come all on their own. Something like: "Yet lying awake in my darkened room/they slide unbidden down by cheeks.
I would delete the second stanza altogether. Personally, I don't think it adds anything to the poem or understanding your pain. It just clutters up the focus.
And finally, I'd suggest doing some shuffling around in your last two stanzas. You need to find a more poetic way to say waking up - maybe 'awake with the new day'. Puffy and swollen are the same thing so you don't need to say both, and that's defiitely not poetic! Why don't you say you're facing it through swollen eyes, or something like that. Then put in your first two lines of the last stanza. They tie in with the puffy eyes idea.
Then the last stanza will show your ambiguity. You don't have to have complete sentences in a poem, so instead of saying "I hope it doesn't show" which sounds so prose-y, switch to 'hoping it doesn't show', then put in your 'half' lines (great lines, by the way). Finish that with your weakness line, except keep the focus on yourself and not on them by changing it to 'I cannot show weakness'. Leave out the 'what's a girl to do?' line. That's too flippant for a poem of this nature. In fact, end with your 'even if it kills me' line, as its own stanza.
You want to keep the focus on YOUR tears and YOUR face and YOU. The second stanza takes that away completely. And in the first and last stanzas, you just need to switch things around a little to keep the spotlight where it should be. eltic Queen
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