Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence and mature content.
Stripes.
Stripes, to break clean color
Vibrancy, to fill it in
Brighter, shades that are prettier than my own
I've never felt this way towards anything but color
A new, exciting shade that I yearn to grasp
To drink in the hue
Leaking, pouring,
Washed down the drain.
Stripes, to clean off my hands.
To bear my burden and accept my guilt
To feel my pain and sorrow
Joy, in the stripes, they fix my soul
And now I've been found whole
Stripes, to break color bright.
Stripes will be my cure.
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142,671 Literary Works • 679,438 Reviews
The only thing I'm asking is why is this 16+? (lol)
A punching poem though! I like it 👍
Hi Star, Noir here to review
...Because I very much enjoy them. This is a very clear image you've created. I almost imagine the stripes as stripes on a hand towel or dish towel of some kind, soaking up the burden and guilt that you mention a line later. Really effective!One might say you've uh...got a bad case of stripes? Lol.
Hehe, I couldn't help myself! Onto the review.
I'm really enjoying your imagery here. It's so colorful -- no pun intended, I swear! The stripes seem to serve as a cleanse for your soul; what's interesting is that its adversary appears to be "clean color". This isn't something I'd typically associate with being nefarious, which hooks me into your work and allows me to attempt some digging on the themes you're exploring. It creates a nice challenge for the reader, which I really appreciate!
I want to call attention to this particular set of lines:
One tiny thing I'd like to note: This is the only rhyme in the poem and I think, as a result, it throws off the pacing just a tad. If there were other lines that rhymed, perhaps following some sort of pattern, I think that would make this part stick out a little less. Right now it's a bit clunky because it seems very intentional but in juxtaposition to the rest of what you've written structure-wise. But to each their own -- I'm sure that's not necessarily the general consensus!
This piece is strong and the symbolism of the stripes is powerful. I think drawing from the art world and intermingling it with our personal struggles/thoughts can spit out some really exciting stuff. That includes the overlapping of various expressions of art, such as visual mediums + writing! I think I get particularly excited seeing these worlds intertwine here because of how purposefully you've aligned them with your emotions. They represent one another well in order to achieve the cleansing I mentioned. Great work!
As always, I enjoyed reading very much, Star! I'm looking forward to continue reading your novel and whatever else you have in store!
You don't read Stripes so much as you get hit by it. The first line—"Stripes, to break clean color"—lands like a slap. No preamble, no "I was thinking about how I feel." Just stripes, and they're already doing something to the color, breaking it, splitting it apart. You're in before you've decided to be.
The obsession hits in the second line and doesn't let go. "Vibrancy, to fill it in." The speaker isn't admiring color; they're consuming it. "To drink in the hue" makes it physical, almost desperate, like someone pressing their face to a glass of water they can't reach. And then—"Leaking, pouring, / Washed down the drain." Three short lines, all downward motion, and you feel the color slip through your fingers. You wanted it. It's gone.
That's where the poem stops being about color and starts being about something else, and it does the switch so quietly you don't notice until you're already inside it. "Stripes, to clean off my hands." The hands were never about color. They were about guilt the whole time. The shift from "I've never felt this way towards anything but color" to "To bear my burden and accept my guilt" is the poem's hinge, and it turns without a sound.
"Joy, in the stripes, they fix my soul" is the line that undoes you. It's simple, almost childlike, and that's exactly what makes it land. The speaker isn't being poetic about their healing; they're telling themselves it's working, and you can hear the hope in it, the need to believe it. "And now I've been found whole" — "found" is the right word, not "made" or "become." Wholeness was already there, buried under the color, and the stripes just swept it into view.
The final two lines close the loop and lock the door. "Stripes, to break color bright. / Stripes will be my cure." The repetition of "stripes" bookends the poem, and "cure" is the last word you're left with. Not "heal," not "fix"—cure, as if the pain was an infection and the stripes are the medicine finally working. You finish the last line and the word sits in your chest for a beat, doing its job.
Where the poem stumbles is in the middle stretch. "Brighter, shades that are prettier than my own" is the weakest line—it tells you the colors are pretty without showing you why, and "prettier than my own" is a comparison that doesn't quite earn its place. "A new, exciting shade that I yearn to grasp" is functional but flat next to the rest; "yearn to grasp" is two verbs doing the same job. The poem is strongest when it's doing one thing per line and weakest when it's trying to do two.
The structure—short, declarative lines, no rhyme, no meter you can pin down—mirrors the content. It feels like someone talking to themselves in the dark, one thought at a time, not trying to impress anyone. That's the poem's real power: it sounds like a person, not a poem. The repetition of "Stripes" as an opening anchor gives it a ritual feel, like a prayer or a chant, and by the third time it appears you're not reading it anymore, you're reciting it alongside the speaker.
It's short, and it earns every line except maybe two. It doesn't try to be more than it is, and that restraint is what makes it work. You finish it and you're left with the image of hands being cleaned, and the word cure, and the quiet, stubborn hope that something bright can actually fix a broken thing. That's enough. That's more than enough.
Well
This is amazing
You make it
Feel like
I too am feeling
These emotions
Like you put
Yourself in every line
I dont have critique
Only that
You should write more
Your work
Amazing
I love it
10/10
Keep going
You got this