I’m alone in a terrible place.
Trapped on an island.
The only way out is to swim through my thoughts.
What a scary thought alone.
Maybe I will drown once I start swimming.
But I would swim through a million seas just to reach your ship.
Poetry
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Wow, I love the turn that this poem takes at the last minute! Initially, the reader is compelled to believe that this work is focused on the inner workings of an individual’s mind. They are “alone is terrible place” and “trapped.” Right away, it seems like the poem will be focused on the individual’s mental turmoil, desperate to sort through his or her muddled thoughts so he or she could achieve some relief. It is “a scary thought” to have to dig deep into one’s brain and make sense of the twisted things within it. Once again, it is as if this poem is all about working through one’s personal conflicts in order to be liberated. However, at the last minute, you provide the narrator with a significant incentive to stride towards that freedom – “to reach your ship.” Based on this statement, the reader can conclude that the narrator has someone in his or her life that’s important – a driving force to heal. It is such a romantic idea: having someone serve as a motivation to get better. I adore it, and I think that the way that you conveyed it is so sweet and pure and charming. Very, very well done!
If there is anything that I think that you should work, it is somehow integrating the title, “Remembrance,” into the poem. Although it is obvious that the theme of the poem is memory, and the narrator needs to remember and trek through past events in order to come to terms with them, you should clearly depict how remembering will help the narrator get well. In other words, maybe give the reader a hint as to what the narrator is dealing with and then delineate how remembering will offer reprieve. Is remembering a way of uncovering and letting the demons go out to sea? (Get it? Because he or she is on a stranded island, surrounded by water?) Is remembering a way of moving forward from a prior self that chose to dwell in solitude and now wants to be more open? All in all, I just believe that being more explicit with how remembrance is essential to the narrator’s recovery would be the cherry on top of the sundae!