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142,273 Literary Works • 677,108 Reviews
text version: when i am old
when i am old
will you fold me up until
i slot between the pages
of your favourite book
when i am old
will you use me like a
microfibre cloth to collect
all the dust on our shelves
when i am old
will you break me in two
like a glow stick and play
with me on bonfire night
when i am old
will you melt me down
into a rose-scented candle
and light me in the winter
when i am old
will you crush me into a fine
powder and sprinkle me into
your hot soups and broths
when i am old
will you mop me up off
the cold floor with warm
water and rinse me down the drain
when i am old
will you roll me into a joint
and then inhale me into your lungs
so i can soothe you to sleep
when i am old
will you bury me in the
garden and water me until
i grow into a fresh pink baby
Hi rev! Lim here with a short review.
To me this poem reads like it's about continued closeness and intimacy in a relationship. The repeated refrain "when i am old" seems to betray a sort of anxiety held by the speaker that the relationship will lose its 'spark', as it were. Each stanza focuses on a different image expressing what this intimacy means. Closeness: being in the partner's favourite book, being 'used' in a domestic task, becoming part of food. There's also this idea of vibrancy, the vitality people usually associate with youth, attached to the glow stick, the lit candle, and finally the idea of 'keeping your youth' is expressed more explicitly with the "pink baby" image.
The poem reads very smoothly. The lines seem to break at all the right places and because of that there's really no need for punctuation to show me where to pause or to develop the meaning. I think choosing to use such a wide range of different images can be a risky move, but it works here, as there's enough commonality among them and the refrain helps bind them together. They all seem to convey different ways in which people can be 'close'.
On a second read, the poem left me wondering why it ends with the "pink baby" line, though. It felt like in other stanzas the poem avoids using 'youth' as a way to signal 'intimacy'. There's no looking back on the past, no clinging to 'youth', no lines like "will we still be dancing like we do in Vegas" or anything like that. The images kind of circle around the elderly domesticity while still retaining a sense of energy: cleaning bookshelves, reading books, bonfire night. I guess there's probably another way to interpret the pink baby line - it's not about youth, it's about being looked after until death AND renewal, preceded by the word "bury". Lots of interpretive richness, for sure.
I also appreciate how parallelistic the stanzas are. They roughly go "when i am old will you (VERB) me and (BLANK)". I feel like this helps create a rhythm for the piece and tie everything together.
Overall, this was an enjoyable read! You'll notice I didn't have many critiques xD I like how you've balanced using different specific images and 'novel' words ("microfibre cloth") and still maintaining focus on the speaker's hope/yearning/fear for that continued closeness in their relationship.
Hope this helps, and keep writing! (Also feel free to let me know if you had specific things you'd like more feedback on c:)
-Lim
thank you so much for the review, Lim! You're right on the mark with it being about continued closeness and intimacy in a relationship. I suppose my idea was that even if I am very old, or even if I was dead, I still want to be useful to my partner, and that being used to domestic chores rather than DOING the chores is a more intimate way to describe that. <3
I love this!
I love this line, it might just be because I love anything that references to books! But it's really beautiful and I admire you for coming up with it. You're so creative!
I thought when I read the description of the poem that it was going to be romantic, but I don't think that it was. It sounds like you are writing about someone being used and/or degraded in a relationship. Personally that's not somebody I would want to row old with X,D
I like that the lyrics is made up of descriptions with references to everyday objects and activities, it made it easy for me to understand and also being interesting at the same time! It gave me vivid pictures in my head while reading! I also find it really cool that you used the references that you did because it's not really things that descriptions in text often reference to ( I wonder how many times I'm going to use the words reference in this review...)
And I also noticed the font that you used, its beautiful. It looks like it was written on a typewriter, which makes me feel like the text is something old, and fragile, like I need to be extra careful while reading it because the contents are worth a lot. I love it! And also of course because it looks cool ^^ !!!
If I got anything wrong don't take it to seriously I only recently got into poetry and I'm really bad at writing reviews TwT
I pretty much just wanted to tell you how much I love your poem!!
(also I'm to lazy to proofread this so if theres any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors I apologise)
Don't apologise! Thank you so much for the review, it really means a lot. I like your interpretation of it being about someone being used and/or degraded in a relationship. This isn't quite what i had in mind but it really works and also adds some more meaning to it perhaps I didn't even realise whilst writing, since I understand that feeling! <3