I could tell you what she looks
Describe her face
How her smile changes it
The way her hair falls around it
How her eyes light up, yet fade away
I could describe her body
The fullness of her breast
The roundness of her hips
The length of her legs
Yet I won’t
This is not about her face – her body
For I do not see it as others do
I can however – I can tell you who she is
Hidden in the spot light
Begging for someone to notice
Anyone to see, only
She keeps it deep inside
Afraid now, too scared to see
How much she isn’t the person she tries to be
She keeps it tight,
Never giving anyone a pass
Never letting anyone see
Just holding it all together
But every now and then
If you look close enough
A crack will appear
The tears silently cried
Fears silently screamed
Its all exposed, left raw
This time it takes a little longer
A little more to burry it
To stay hidden in the spot light
But she does
It is who she is
It is the reflection I see
Looking back at me
A contest entry
- Character Profile [1] by sideways hourglass.
525 points, ended September 2, 2008, 19 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
-
This was interesting. I like the basic idea.
A few critiques I have:
In the beginning, you described how she looked. Then you said, "Yet I won't [describe how she looks]" even though you just described her.
So I thought the whole "I could, I could" tone didn't work out. It would have been more effective if you described how she looked; and then went into how her personality changed.
I thought
"Describe her face
How her smile changes it
The way her hair falls around it
How her eyes light up, yet fade away"
was good enough imagery to imply that she was changing or that something wasn't quite right about her; because you mentioned that "her smile changes" and then you said "her eyes light up, yet fade away"
I felt those were good transitions to describing of her personality and how she changed.
As for the rest of the poem, you told too much and didn't show enough.
"I could describe her body
The fullness of her breast
The roundness of her hips
The length of her legs"
this is decent imagery.
If you had more of that, the poem would have been much better poetically speaking.
Besides those critiques, I enjoyed this poem. I thought the twist at the end was clever. Thank you for entering and good luck in the contest.
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