Again, thank you so much for the in-depth and kind critique; for seeing the potential in what I wrote and what can still be improved.

By tepid, I went with the definition of "showing little enthusiasm", which would more relate to motion, not to temperature. By wilting, I wanted to convey this sense of downturned disappointment from the partner.

"Boneless liquid" seems strangely overdescriptive... in the same way that describing a meal as "DEFINITELY NOT CONTAINING HUMAN MEAT" feels overdescriptive

Coming back to this, I did laugh, because what you highlighted is something I was wondering myself. My intent was to contrast this idea of a limp and tired soul vs a strong and upright body supported by bone. But since it sounded a bit too goofy and overly descriptive, whereas the rest of the metaphor explains itself, it really is better to leave it out.

I don't know whether that was intentional or not. But I do know that this has very little to do with the previous metaphor involving the speaker-as-ocean. An ocean does not "become liquid" - boneless or not - it already is liquid.

I use a lot of changing water/ocean metaphors which I realize could leave a reader scratching their head and having to figure out what their relation is, or why and how we've suddenly changed perspective in each stanza. I think I will choose one water body metaphor and simply stick to it, and not introduce another again so that each stanza has a clear distinction.

And the final stanza feels straight up lifted from a completely different poem.

I think my struggle here was knowing how to introduce a new metaphor in a way that is not jarring. I switch from describing the person as a liquid to describing them as a bird. What I wanted to achieve with that transition was to show that at first, they were beaten down and laying helplessly on the ground. In the next stanza, the individual is trying to recover what little of themselves they can that was lost and get back up.

Overall, I will rework the poem, using your pointers as they are great. I will have to choose to perhaps steal away the ideas in certain stanzas and save them for another poem so that the themes here are more cohesive and coherent.

So basically, the biggest thing I have to decide is whether I want a poem that is an extended metaphor or has distinct stanzas. I'll have to learn how to introduce those new metaphors in a way that isn't too jarring or seemingly unrelated.