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142,252 Literary Works • 677,084 Reviews
Text version:
Stillness, a privilege so easily forgotten.
Thank you for reading!
Spoiler
Forgetting, an act of choosing to live in impermanence.
I didn’t want to die. I would never miss life.
Without my body, I would have left this place long ago.
Because I look beyond this state, before this attachment,
I see bare skin, flowers, wrapped in knotted hair,
A kneeling woman, pressed to the earth by the weight of her scars.
I remember; I accept that this is eternity;
Whatever lives forever never started in the first place.
Sometimes dead is better. Can you remember being born?
Can you remember resting in stillness? How did you forget?
Do you remember losing everything that would ever matter,
For the first time? Your skin and bones, lowered into dirt,
Entering the privilege of forgetting that you had ever lived?
I didn’t want to die, but it’s happened a thousand times before,
I would have left this place so long ago, but this soul craves rest.
This soul enters torment, destroys itself to be witnessed again.
I fall in love with a poem, which has been written by other hands before.
In stillness is the loss of life; forgetting is accepting to die again.
I'd love reviews in the form of poems! Any reviews are appreciated, though
Hello, Ellie! I saw your request to send reviews as poems but I'm no poet so I hope a good ol' paragraph-y review works lol.
First things first:
I'm not a massive fan of experimental poetry forms. I think it's often just the poet being self-important or stroking their ego. Why do I say this? Because that's the mindset with which I went into reading your poem - a mindset that was soundly shattered by the time I finished reading. While I do still think that the poem would work better in a traditional form (e.g. how you've written it in the comments), I think it ultimately doesn't matter. The imagery, the composition, and the story being told is damn-near exceptional.
Some more detail:
What I truly appreciate is that you've not made the classic mistake a lot of early poets make; that of just stating, in a sing-song way, "I feel XYZ/why is XYZ happening". Your use of metaphor and simile is very expertly handled. In particular:
That last line says something visceral about the fragility of the physical world, without ever actually saying it explicitly. Well done!
Also the closing lines are so good! I don't know if meditating on the cyclical nature of existence was your intention, but they encapsulate that pretty freaking well. Good poem
Morning Ellie, came here because you offered your poem as a Review Request :3
Oh I wonder already if this stillness is also a metaphor for ppl nowadays (myself included) being unable to do ~nothing~ for it is not “productive”? That any moment of giving yourself rest is viewed through the lens of productivity?
Love the contrast between not wanting to die but also not missing life. As in, as long as you are alive you also want it, but after death, there is nothing left that would want, right?
I also love the line abt the weight of scars. I am not sure what it means (Is the woman dead now, are we at her funeral?) but it sounds beautiful.
Ohhh and then you have the line abt “for the first time” (love that it is in the next verse!) and that we are maybe talking abt reincarnation but also maybe abt something else (maybe a metaphor for how we change as ppl constantly and redefining ourselves might as well become the death of a different version of us? Related to that, maybe the last line abt the poem being written again by other hands… mb written by a different version of you? Or maybe just that nothing that is ever written is truly original? And therefore every poem we can write might be “just” a remix of what came before. But still somehow ours?)
I like how you bring this all around to stillness again.
I am certain there is meaning in how you arranged the stanzas even if I can’t decipher it.
I do have to say that the text is awfully small. I know you put it as text below but I would love to have it more readable in the beautifully arranged version :3
(Unless it being smaller font is part of some sorta symbolism I didn’t get?)
I also kinda wish there were a way for you to put the text version INTO the work itself for easier quoting XD
Thanks for sharing :3
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PS: Just noticed the thing abt Reviews as Poems. And. NEVER! XD