My Tormenter
By TC
Once warmer than the deserts of the Sudan
Now colder than an Arctic blizzard
Winds so sharp like daggers to the face
Lost to everything like an asteroid floating through space
Cold and darkness all around
No type of warmth or light could be found
The cold becomes comfort
The darkness becomes virtuous
Pain no longer hurts
Emotion no longer exists
Torn between what was and what is
Feeling anguish of what if
Tears dried up
All deceit, no trust
Travail becomes pleasure
No longer thinking when we were together
Love…my tormenter
So I became numb to it
I cut my heart out and tossed it in the trench
Positive it would never be found
For I don’t ever want to feel this love again
My tormenter, who was once my friend
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Beautiful poem…I hope that you will one day find a way to open yourself up to pain if you haven’t already. Pain, while it may be hard, can be a beautiful thing.
I felt the words pulling me down as I read this, like I was falling with it. And I wanted to know where it was going, where exactly we were falling to. I could also *feel* the author’s anguish, and the heaviness of it increased the further we fell.
Interestingly, this poem reads well from top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top. 🙂
Thank you very much for writing this!
I like the way that you illustrate how locked-away the narrator becomes from his own emotions as he faces obstacle after obstacle in his life. When survival is the focus, with “cold and darkness all around,” there isn’t room for the narrator to feel.
I think some of the strongest lines come when you use a really specific noun or phrase to describe something specific. It helps to add texture and color to the poem, to make us “feel” the more abstract things that you are talking about, like pain, and darkness, and pleasure, and trust, and love. Examples of those would be in the top of the poem, where you mention the desert, blizzard, daggers, and asteroids. Keep using those concrete images! They really help a reader connect to your poem!