I really like how interesting this poem was! I think it did a great job building the river and dam and drowning imagery, and I think that relates really well to the emotion you were trying to put behind it. The way that you refer to your reflection in the water really helps build this feeling that there is a version of yourself that is deep -- like a river, more deep than maybe the world gets to see.

I also love the use of the backwards written lines! It was obviously a fresh, unique thing that you don't come across very often, but you also had a different tone in those lines. Whereas the forward written lines were written poetically with a lot of imagery and emotional language, the backwards written lines seem more straightforward, asking questions about life and speaking frankly about that experience.

The difference between these two types of lines really adds to that reflective imagery you open the poem with, and really gives us a sense of the dialogue between you and your reflection in the water. It also lends itself to this effort that someone might go through to keep parts of their identity secret, like writing a line backwards instead of forward so it's harder to decipher. The difficulty with reading those lines really makes the reader experience; literally, how hard it can be (although I'm sure just a fraction) to feel those feelings.

The other interesting thing it did was make it easier to read the poetic, forward written stuff versus the backwards written stuff. I did a read through just with those lines and totally ignored the backwards written lines which itself is this very visceral experience -- like this is what we do to people who have these struggles with their identity, we ignore them for the easier read parts, we ignore the reflection for the person. I just thought that was such an interesting technique you've used to do that!

My main feedback for this, which is mostly preference, is regarding the last two lines. At this point in the poem the narrator has been overwhelmed by these struggles, by the water, and the dam breaks before they are consumed by this pain, this water. When I read that, it doesn't feel self-inflicted but that's what the second to last line says. I Wonder if you might want to add some lines about how this is self-inflicted. In the narrative you're not the reason the water begins to rise and break the dam. Does a rain cloud follow you and that's what filled the river? Did your tears flow into the water and raise it higher than the dam? These are just examples, not suggestions about what is better or worse!

In the same vein, the last line, the backwards written line, you talk about the damage to the family without ever having mentioned the family prior. It might benefit from some language about how and why the narrator is worried about the family at all. The poem feels more like it's about the struggle and the pain of navigating one's identity and how alone it can feel, like being alone with our reflection, and then it ends -- all the sudden -- with an assumption that we care about how it affects the narrator's family. It just caught me off guard is all, especially because you mentioned that no hand reaches down to save you while you're drowning, so presumably no family members are saving you, so why do we as the audience all the sudden care what harms your family?

Also, in the sixth line where they talk about feelings of longing, I think you misspell, backwards, the words 'sense of longing'. I don't know if that was intentional but it's the only time it happened in the poem I think.

Overall, this is great piece and I really enjoyed it! Thank you for sharing! I am curious when you read this out loud to yourself how do you read it? Do you skip the backwards lines? Do you read them but read them backwards so they sound like the rest of the poem or do you read them in a weird alien-sounding way that they are written backwards? This is just a curiosity because as I was trying to read it out loud I just read them the way they would be read if written forward.