If

[billy]

hi rose. personal poetry; it can be a bitch seeing your soul getting dissected but here goes

This needs a serious overhaul. It's highly personal, yes, but...it's from my past and it's not a state I live in anymore (thank God for that).
first off, i get a feel that it's a bit wordy in places. wordy parts in [these brackets and bold]

If
if somebody loved me
[i know] i would not cling to You
so unrelentingly
as [these,] writhing limbs of the cursed,
tighten their grip
constricting wrathfully 'round my ankles
dragging me off [with them]
to eternal hellfire and damnation.
straight away it's your own if and not an homage to kipling. the tone is set and the pain and need are evident
if somebody loved me
[i know] i would not clutch [so] desperately
onto Your shoestrings
fraying threads
dangling me over this wailing bottomless pit
sucking me forcefully into its vacuum of eternally lost souls. I'm not sure sucking me forcefully into its is needed, a suggestion would be to sawp it with an 'a' . eternal/eternally could one of them be changed,
i like the enjambment you have in this stanza specially L3,4, and 5 fraying threads adds great tension as it dangles over the pit line. also creates a good image

if somebody loved me
[i know] i would not grasp so frantically at Your heels
in futile attempts to save myself
from the fright of [my] living death
as i sink into [my] inescapable oblivion
momentarily pulling You [with me] this line feels too forgiving. a suggestion would be 'wanting to pull you' why the capped Y
down beneath the line of sanity.

if somebody loved me
i could release my bleeding fists
too severely rapt in anguish
freeing You
laying to rest at long last
my abused heart
in a healing
bed of love not sure this line is working enough to be included. i like the the line above though, it sort of hangs as the 1st person in the does.

if.

I loved it when I first wrote it. Now...I can't really feel it anymore.

i liked it, i think like most personal poetry is extends itself. let's face it, with personal poetry we just want to get the emotion out, we laugh love and cry with the words when it's emotionally personal. while most poetry is personal, when writing for others as well as ourselves it's often more about presenting a solid read for others. this is definitely a solid read but i think an edit would make it more so. it's a painful read and if it's personal it must have been a painful write. thanks for being brave enough to throw it out there.

thanks for the read.

---

Well, how would I indicate that I had been living in the state for over 3 decades?

a suggestion;

3 decades laying to rest

it gives an almost exact time and shows that your not talking about teenage angst...just a suggestion