Obsession Over If

[addy]

addy you mentioned that the ending was vague and clunky but you do understand where I was going with it, any suggestions on how to improve it?

sometimes it is a place and a time
and when it happens, it is a memory

The "it"s trip you up, I think. Throughout the poem, the recurring idea was that the abstract concepts of the world and her life, though ephemeral, had disappointed her and caused her very real pain. (Interestingly pain itself seems concrete but actually is also pretty abstract). So it was a good thought to close the poem with, the idea that concrete things transform to abstract things through the filter of experience and memory. That's how I interpret it anyway. It's just... as a reader, it was a little hard getting to that interpretation.

It's really just the phrasing, with the proliferation of the evasive "it"'s ... i was able to interpret it in the context of the wider poem, but taken in isolation the stanza for me does struggle to explain itself. You might be getting into a headspace that's so abstract that you struggle to use language that is helpful to the reader.