I applaud you for being one of the few poets to establish a setting in a piece, but as the poem progresses, I think the imagery tends to get lost in thought. In the beginning you state that the character is standing behind the door, waiting. “But nothing collides” telling the reader that no one answers, and that’s when the character’s reality gets confused with the character’s memory. Suddenly the character is stumbling in the street at night and I’m not sure if this is really happening, in the present, or if its already occurred repeatedly, in the past. Your word choice such as “blank canvas and sound-less dreams” donate towards your tone, but does not cause the reader to sympathize with the lonely character you’ve created. Needs work.

Congratulations on not having a terrible poem. First of all the fluidity of your poem needs work. The beginning had awkward enjambments that took away from how the poem flowed. For example: “on the other side -- hoping -- that you would anytime now -- knock.” As the poem progresses the line breakage gets better: “'til one day i can wake up -- the next morning -- and not remember your name -- or what i was waiting for” By the end of the poem the lines seem more cohesive and like complete thoughts. Your usage of figurative language was okay. Nothing too complex. Example: “soundless dreams” and “blank canvas of my heart”. You had a cohesive theme but there wasn’t that much depth. The theme was that she was trying to forget about some guy: “'til one day i can wake up -- the next morning -- and not remember your name -- or what i was waiting for”. Overall the poem was not bad.

First of all, I would like to say that your poem is probably the best I have ever read on the Teen Ink website. Your word choice does seem very limited though, as shown by using the word blank twice in two lines of your poem (“stroke your blank name/upon the blank canvas of my heart”). Stroke is also a very awkward word to use in this situation, and it didn’t mesh very well with the rest of the poem. After the lines “and it hurts/ like getting/ a placatory pat on the back”, I feel it is rather superfluous to use the next three lines “after losing/ and hearing/“Try again next time””, because those lines are unneeded details that explain things to a reader who could really just look the word up if they didn’t know what the word meant. The line “as if it could heal a spirit” is rather cliché, and it could have been worded better to make it less cliché by using very different words to describe it. You did a very good job with the tone of your poem, and you did get the message of the narrator’s frustration across.