Personal Column

[heslopian]

This is a surprisingly painful and poignant poem. I was prepared to assign it an "add more images, metaphor etc." critique, and though adding more of those couldn't hurt, I was struck by how moved I felt after about the halfway point. When I read the lines "But then you started/coming back" I assumed that you meant a physical, actual return, and was pleasantly surprised when I saw that you meant it in a metaphorical sense. There's real pain here, bolstered by the short lines and consistent, regular use of punctuation, which creates a heartbeat-like rhythm. Thank you for giving me a more emotional reading experience than I expected I thought I'd grown sick of love poems