falling for your bluff.

[wasellajam]

Hi, Jean, Welcome to the Pen!

So it seems you've edited since you posted, which is a good thing but for members like me that return for repeated reads brewing a critique in their mind it's disorienting to find a different poem when it's unmarked as such. The remedy for this is here: How to post an edit.

That being said, my fault for being a slowpoke, I'll be back after a few (more timely) reads.
Happy to have you here, thanks for posting.

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falling for your bluff.
Strong title full of info.

my descent arose
in the dive i made falling for you.
the further i fell,
the less of myself i held onto.
I like descent vs arose, strong start. I'm not sure if L3/4 add anything that isn't said more subtly in L1/2, just something to think about.

ribs strained to make room
for rancour i never outgrew.
naïvely praying someday,
my rest would ring due.
I've got some confusion here: "outgrew" makes me think you came to the relationship with it, maybe "outgrow", in fact, the whole poem may be stronger in the present tense, you might try it and see which you prefer. I'm having trouble making sense of "ring due", I like it as a play on "ring true" but still, something is off for me.

but through it all, you threw all
burdens on me to bear.
every added ounce
left me more worn with wear.
"burdens on me to bear." I think you could think of a more novel say to say this. I was hoping "worn with wear" would grow on me but it hasn't, in order for it to not sound written for the rhyme you may need to change "worn".

rifts and tears were left
where my heart used to be.
severed from the sleeve
that anchored me
I like the play on wearing your heart on your sleeve, the image goes a long way towards saving the cliche of L2. You might somehow get "rifts and tears" to introduce it more effectively. Fan of "severed from the sleeve".

to the belief
that one day, the pain would pay off,
and the games you'd play
would wither away,
and i could finally stay off
I like the increased speed you're developing here.

the edge of this bluff
i'd hung so high from.
this hill i'd willingly die on.
The second bluff, it works for me.

now mounted close to commune
with clouds we had laid under,
i was left to wonder
whether they'd extend the grace
of saving me at all.
I recall having an issue here originally, reads well to me now.

at last, began to grasp
the cranes in our sky
would only deepen my fall.
I can never get the cranes, for me these lines just get in the way.

and you'd have the gall to just watch it unravel.

i held on for our life, my dear.
yet still wallow in the gravel
of your grave mistakes.
Gravel/grave is lovely.

I sort of enjoyed the erratic rhymes and structure.

Okay, so this is a lot for the Basic Critique Forum but I think you can handle it and I wanted to post promptly before you changed anything. These are just my notes as a reader, take them or leave them. Thanks for posting this, I enjoyed reading it.